


Aftermaths

by Frozen Linguaphile (Yashiko61)



Series: Aftermaths & Other Stories [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon compliant through season 7, Descriptions of medical treatments, Gen, M/M, Post-season 7, Season 7 Spoilers, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-06-26 02:58:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 40,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yashiko61/pseuds/Frozen%20Linguaphile
Summary: In the aftermath of the battle to free Earth, Shiro and the team deal with their injuries and begin on the path to recovery, but face new challenges as the new world order shifts around them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fic is currently canon compliant through to the end of season 7, although it has a number of head canons about Shiro's background and a ton of other details that I am sure is going to be totally disproven when season 8 comes out.

Shiro could not shake the sense of dread that washed over him in waves, drowning out the crushing exhaustion from what he could only think to call the longest, and now possibly simultaneously worst and best day of his life.

The five lions plummeted from the sky, comms dead, and status unknown. Blue veered off towards the ocean, Green, towards the forested area well beyond the Garrison lands. Yellow landed close to the nearby city, with Red and Black in the vicinity of the base.

The Atlas was barely running, but they noted the dispatch of medical crews. Shiro’s newfound Altean connection was of no use - the lions landed hard enough to imply that they were totally without power. He desperately needed to get down there, but as his left hand let go of the console in front of him, his knees buckled and he slid awkwardly to the floor, heart pounding in his ears in tandem with the throbbing behind his eyes.

“Shirogane!” Iverson pushed away from his own console, and the touch of the commander’s hands on his shoulder a few seconds later grounded him enough to unclench his eyes and take a deep breath. Iverson’s orders to the on-board medics sounded distant and muted, and Shiro barely registered a handheld medical scanner being waved over him, before someone helped pull the glove off his left hand. It wasn’t until he felt a prick on a finger, the medic squeezing a drop for a blood sugar reading, that he could focus. Sam Holt had appeared next to him, concern radiating in waves while Iverson’s voice boomed in the background.

“He has broken ribs, other contusions, and he’s so hypoglycemic that I am amazed he’s conscious,” the medic muttered, voice muffled by the medical suit’s mask. “Let’s get him back to the medical bay, and we can prep him for transfer to the base hospital.”

Shiro pushed the medic’s arm away weakly. “No, the others,” he grunted.

Sam’s lips pursed, obviously trying to focus on what was in front of him rather than his own daughter. “The crews are on their way. We need to look after you too.”

Two medics pulled Shiro up to his feet, and within a couple minutes had him laid down on an infirmary bed, while a gurney was prepped to the side for the inevitable transport down to the base. The sensor in the bed lit up in angry, deep oranges.

The upper half of the suit was peeled off, revealing a sweat soaked undershirt covering extensive bruising. The Garrison’s standard pressure suits were not armoured in the same way the paladin suits were, and nearly all his body was battered.

Shiro felt a pinch as an IV line was started in his left arm, and Shiro could barely keep his eyes open against the bright lights overhead.

“No, no sedatives,” he complained in Sam’s general direction, the world turning heavy against his will.

“I’m sorry son, but this time, it’s all your own body. Rest, let us take care of you all.”

And the world turned to dark.

\---

The red and black lions dropped closest to the base, the impacts shaking the Garrison. Emergency crews reached them both within minutes, and before the dust even had time to settle, a crew cracked open the hatch of the black lion, where they were greeted to a body crumpled to the side of the pilot’s chair, chin resting against his chest.

A dribble of blood flowed from an unseen wound above the faceplate of Keith’s helmet, splattering the glass. His breathing hitched every few breaths. An engineer relayed the suit signal to Commander Holt, who overrode the environmental controls to increase the oxygen concentration being fed by the helmet, and Keith’s lips got a hint of colour from the unhealthy, pale tone of a few minutes before.

They carefully braced his neck and backboarded him, the luxury of time in their hands finally over the chaos of the last day. Loading him into the ambulance with a portable medical scanner strapped to the chest plate of the armour, they raced into the Garrison complex, arriving at almost the same time as a figure in blue was off loaded to another trauma bay.

Keith was pushed directly to the closest open trauma suite. The helmet was carefully removed, oxygen supplementation continued, and the paladin suit removed piece by piece. Almost all his joints looked inflamed, his body painted in bruises. The exposed head wound was irrigated and sealed, and a blood sample drawn, before they pushed his unconscious form into the advanced scanning unit.

“There is evidence of a severe concussion. With the loss of consciousness, assume grade three but send the images to the neurologist for a consult. Get me the initial blood analysis,” a doctor ordered.

“Blood gases are now within normal range,” replied another doctor, scanning the report. “Blood glucose levels are below 40 mg/dL, electrolytes are off.”

“Prepare an IV and add an anti-inflammatory. Records indicate no known medication sensitivities. Imaging shows multiple cracked ribs, but no damage to the lungs. No spinal damage. Let’s get the neck brace off, but continue to support oxygen intake until we have pain management under control.”

“Just look at all the contusions,” a nurse commented in a hushed voice, shifting over to connect a line to the IV catheter.

“One of the rescue crew said that he was in multiple fights today alone. The muscles are definitely strained, but there was no ligament tears visible in the scans. Let’s get him cleaned up, then redo the blood analysis.”

"The commander is outside, " a medic reported.

"Shirogane? We don't have time to let him in, focus on the patient here," the doctor replied tersely without looking up from noting Keith's pupil responses with a pen light.

"Understood. Hey, let's get him turned. There is a small cut on his back..."


	2. Chapter 2

Shiro started to stir awake as the gurney was wheeled over the threshold and through the emergency ward of the Garrison hospital. The prosthetic arm was tucked to his side and pressed against his torso awkwardly, strapped under the light blanket that covered him, while his left arm was laid over his chest. The pressure suit was bunched uncomfortably under his back. A couple bags of clear fluids swung from a pole over his head, the fluid slowly feeding an IV line.

His whole body ached in tandem with the pounding in his head. The gurney was pulled to a halt, wheels squeaking in protest. Lifting his head up was too much effort, but he looked to the side, where the glass doors into a trauma room revealed a team working around a person with dark hair. Keith.

“He’s waking up,” came the voice of a medic from behind him, out of sight. Another medic looked up from a tablet, and turned to him. “Commander, we’re just about to transfer you upstairs as soon as we get better scans. You might already be feeling a bit better, we have you on a glucose drip.”

“My head,” Shiro said, mouth feeling like it was stuffed with dry cotton, “It’s pounding.”

“They pushed a mild pain killer on the way here, they can give you something better when we get you in.” The strap across his chest was unbuckled, and the head of the gurney was raised slightly.

A nurse came up and issued directions to the medics. “Commander, we are taking you in for scans, then up to the ward.” The gurney squeaked as it was pushed forward.

“No, wait,” Shiro craned his neck so that Keith stayed in view. “The paladins…”

“The ones from the black and red lions are here, the others are on route. They are in good hands.”

A wave of pain and nausea hit, and Shiro pinched his eyes shut. An emesis basin was temporarily placed on his lap, and they pulled him to a medical scanning suite before he could protest further. The bottom half of the pressure suit was peeled away, and the cold plastic padding of the scanner platform elicited a gasp. More painkillers were pushed into the IV line before he heard the loud hum above him. The nausea built, and by the time they helped him sit up to transfer back to the gurney, he couldn’t help but heave a meager amount of liquid into the offered basin.

“Pull a blood sample, then take him up. The doctor will meet him at the ward.”

And he slipped back into an exhausted sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Within a few hours, all six of them were resting in the wards. Hunk also had a concussion from the impact, and his parents sat at his side as he rested under their tired watch. Pidge slept with her mother at her feet, Sam checking in between coordinating the retrieval of the lions and the initial clean up efforts.

Allura was exhausted, but in decent shape, all things concerned. The blue lion had plunged into the ocean. Surrounded by its element, it was the only one to recharge enough to make it back on its own power. Romelle, feeling more useless, kept watch while Coran worked with the Garrison officers. Lance’s family waited en masse outside his room, his sister and mother alternating in the room for the first day until the heaviness of sleep receded.

All would be fine, mostly needing just time, sleep, some food, and the presence of loved ones.

Shiro slept for nearly ten hours, while they ran IV fluids, but then convinced the medical staff into allowing him to visit the others. His ribs and legs ached beneath the soft braces the medical staff had strapped him into, but the headache had retreated into the background. With the aid of an exasperated nurse, who pushed him and his IV pole down the ward, he made short visits with everyone, then moved on to Keith’s room.

Keith had been worse off than the others. His mother received a message, and was making her way to Earth along with other key groups. She would be there when she could, but until then, he was alone.

The nurse helped Shiro into a padded chair next to the bed before leaving the room. Keith had yet to fully wake up, the combined effects of a severe concussion and unspeakable exhaustion taking their toll. Purple bruising mottled his skin under the soft, cotton patient gown, where the armour plates did not protect. A bandage covered a cut on Keith’s scalp, held in place with a ring of sterile cotton around his forehead. Someone had washed the sweat off his skin, and his hand, pulled up to Shiro’s face, smelled slightly of disinfectant soap, but otherwise was warm and dry, the pulse beating from the vein on Keith’s pale wrist.

There was a slightly odd sheen over the scar on Keith’s face. While he slept, a surgeon had done a consult and authorized a treatment that he said might lessen the scar’s sensitivity to sunlight. It would never fade, but it could be possibly be lessened, Shiro was told.

Heavy bootsteps near the doorway snapped Shiro from his thoughts. Iverson leaned against the door jam, looking as tired as Shiro felt mere hours ago.

“I thought you might be here,” was all Iverson offered.

“He’s all alone,” Shiro conceded. “The others have their families here already and I just...”

“He has you,” Iverson interjected, cutting Shiro off. “You’ve always looked after him.”

“I was told that Commander Holt was able to get in contact with his mother.”

“Ah yes, the Galra woman. I, uh, never would have guessed with him.”

Shiro sighed but had a slight smile on his face. “I don’t think any of us did.”

“Anyways, yes, Sam Holt said she was contacted. It will take a few days. Maybe longer.”

“Of course.” Shiro set Keith’s hand down and tugged the blanket over it. “Uh, sir,” he said, looking up at Iverson and suddenly self conscious. “Have you been able to rest?”

Iverson’s lips quirked into a small smile. “Cut it out with the “sir” thing, Shirogane. That promotion of yours is going to stick, I’m sure of it. And yes, I got a nap in while you were still counting alien sheep, and now I get a 12 hour rest period. We’re cycling people through between rest and emergency repairs.”

Shiro felt a pang of guilt, and pressed his left hand against the armrest of the chair, his prosthetic brushing off the blanket draped over his lap as he moved to stand up.

“Don’t even think about it, you’re off until you’re cleared by the medical staff,” Iverson warned. “The way the doctor still moans about your blood sugar levels, just be glad you aren’t hooked up to a feeding tube.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Shiro had woken up with a catheter that he had no recollection of them inserting, and a stomach growling for food loud enough that he was surprised that it hadn’t woken Keith up from down the ward. Even then, he barely got through half a plate of scrambled eggs - real Earth eggs! - and a piece of toast before he was full. The nurse had said that it was to be expected, but then refused to free him from his IV drip.

“Where is your family, Shirogane?”

Shiro’s eyes darted up, meeting Iverson’s. “Oh,” he stalled. “I haven’t talked with them for a long time sir. You know that.”

“No kidding Shirogane, you’ve been missing for years. Why aren’t they on your contact file?”

Shiro looked away, studying the texture of the covers on Keith’s bed. “They never approved of my career aspirations. Or my choice to leave Japan. Long before the mission. Around the time I graduated and got my officer commission, my parents stopped replying to my messages. I had a few extended relatives who kept in touch, but all I ever heard was that they felt I had made my own path and that it did not match their aspirations for me. I thought you were aware.”

“You and Adam were already together by that time,” Iverson surmised.

“Only just, but that might have been part of it too,” Shiro replied quietly. “I thought I had long made peace with it.”

“I’m sorry, son. I didn’t know.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

Keith stirred slightly, brows scrunching together. Shiro startled momentarily, but pressed the notification button for the nursing station. Iverson nodded at Shiro without speaking further and moved out of the room. Two of the nursing staff came in and took vitals. Keith had already relaxed back into full unconsciousness, but the nurses took the opportunity to roll him onto his side, back to the door and where Shiro sat.

He pressed his left hand against Keith’s back before he let the nurses help him back to his own room. Pulling the tablet he was given onto his lap, he logged into his old personal message inbox for the first time in about five years, although it felt like it could have been a lifetime ago.

Almost buried in endless spam that clearly had followed him even into his assumed death, but near the top of the list of unread messages was a line in Japanese, from a second cousin who had stayed out of the drama of so many years ago. The time stamp was from mere hours ago.

<<Your parents have heard the good news,>> was all it read, the characters nearly foreign and forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, I don't have a definitive plan to continue this work, but the last chapter sort of morphed into something that should be continued. Still working out my own thoughts about the season and am re-watching some episodes tonight. Comments and kudos are much appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

Pidge, Lance, and Allura were all up by the next day for the main part, albeit still tired. Hunk was still dealing with concussion symptoms, but was recovering. The Garrison was intent on continuing to monitor them all. Their adventures in space had taught Shiro that their quintessance, their life force, was replenishing. All they could do was wait.

Sam Holt stopped by to see Shiro early that morning. The lions with the exception of Black had powered up just enough for Coran to run system checks, and were to be transported back to the Garrison. Coran was wary of transporting the black lion, but there was an added challenge of moving its additional mass. It was close enough to the runway, so it was not much of a matter.

Keith continues to cycle closer to consciousness, but still had yet to fully awaken. It could take time, said the one nurse, as she rolled Keith’s limp body from one side to the other before covering him again with a blanket. Shiro successfully freed himself of his constant IV pole companion by lunch, and after a long awaited shower, was content to catch up on reports being sent to him while lounged in the chair next to Keith’s bed. He was letting the others enjoy quiet time with their own families.

Shiro noted clinically that the bruising that mottled his own skin was starting to turn yellow toned in places, a sign of healing. His ribs still ached, and likely would for days. He made a note to himself, that at some point when they were less busy, to look at how they might incorporate more Altean tech into the Garrison pressure suits. Armour in more key places would have helped his battered shins and forearm, and maybe saved his lower chest from that injury as well.

The prosthetic arm settled awkwardly, balanced between the armrest and his lap. He had barely a few days to get used to it before everything went to hell, and it still felt oddly foreign to him. Perhaps it was because, unlike the Galra arm, not attached to him. The electromagnetic field that held it in place would eventually hold him up if he tried to use it to push himself up, but it was not reliable. His left arm ached from being used for almost everything still. 

He was grateful to Allura, but debated tasking the Holt gang and Hunk into eventually finding a compromise. Especially as he hoped that someday, maybe, he no longer would be needed as a soldier.

By the end of the second day following the battle, he had been unceremoniously shooed from Keith’s room. Dinner was a poor attempt at Japanese cuisine, delivered from only god knows where. It made him think back to home and his childhood for the second day in a row, but he shrugged it off before trying to find a comfortable sleeping position on the hospital bed.

\--- 

On the third day, Matt unexpectedly showed up. News travels fast in the universe it would seem, and the rebel group managed to get access to a wormhole. It was effectively a one way trip back to Earth until a new teladuv could be constructed, but he was all smiles on his way to the debriefing, his parents in tow while Pidge fumed from the hospital, forced to wait to see him.

Keith wakes up fully for the first time, and manages to make it through a neurological test before falling back asleep. The black lion roared from its resting point near the base, having clearly waited for her paladin to wake to do so herself. Cosmo finally reappears at Keith’s feet, and the nurse is aghast at this new development to the amusement of everyone else.

Shiro was released from the care of the medical staff shortly later. He travels to the black lion with Coran, and manages to convince her to move to the hangar with the other lions.

Krolia and Kolivan arrive on Matt’s heels by nightfall, and after a short visit with Keith, they are given some privacy. Cosmo ‘ports off to be with Krolia, and Shiro visits Keith one more time before heading off to a meeting to discuss the memorial service that was being planned.


	5. Chapter 5

Earth, having gone from sheltered and unaware, to conquered, and now famous in thousands of worlds, was oddly bustling within days of the battle. Members of the coalition arrived in waves, to be greeted by the wary but appreciative citizens of Earth.

Shiro had been taken aback by the request that he deliver the keynote speech at the memorial service. He felt hardly qualified. Over the next day, he was approached separately by more people than he could count, saying that he was the best person to eulogize the countless war dead.

Keith, propped upright in his hospital room bed one evening and looking undecided at the bowl of soup steaming gently in front of him, had nearly got out of bed to smack Shiro himself when he heard that Shiro had nearly refused.

“What do you mean you don’t think you don’t deserve it?!” Keith’s voice crackled slightly. He was still sleeping two thirds of each day, and was decidedly annoyed with the medical orders to not read, not watch TV, to not really do anything really. Cosmo, having clearly sensed Keith’s mood from wherever the wolf had been hiding before, popped into the room unexpectedly, curling into Keith’s side with a worried expression like an overgrown lap dog.

“I don’t know!” Shiro threw up his hands in a huff, the movement appearing to be more dramatic with the floating right arm. “There is countless other higher ranked officers at the Garrison. Any one of them is better qualified to, well, do this.” 

“You single-handedly led the entire Garrison’s forces in the battle against Sendak,” Keith shot back, trying to shoo Cosmo to at least the foot of the bed instead of in his face. “You deserve the recognition.”

Shiro gave Keith a pointed glare. “You know damn well it wasn’t single-handed. And that’s not even the point.”

“I don’t get why you are so worried. I saw the draft script before my mom pulled the tablet out of my hands, they already have it practically written for you already.”

“Somewhere in the muddled memories of the clone,” Shiro sighed, not wanting to get into this line of conversation, “Is that ridiculous series of shows Coran made us all do. I am about as natural in forced public speaking as Hunk trying to creep off to a kitchen quietly.”

Keith barked a short laugh before catching himself, and pushed Cosmo away from the remnants of his supper tray. “That’s only convincing if they haven’t heard you lead everyone as though you were born for the job.”

“It doesn’t mean I want it.”

“Look, I am the last person to try and convince you that it will be enjoyable, but for once, just do it. I suckered Lance into reading me the news summaries from the last few days when he escaped his family for an hour, and we have so much work to do. But people need the closure first.”

“Right,” Shiro replied, looking out the window, sounding unconvinced.

“So?”

“It’s tomorrow,” he sighed. “It doesn’t feel like, well, mine.”

Keith smothered a yawn, and pushed Cosmo off the bed with a “go back to Mom” before the nurse could spot his teleporting space pet again. “Here, read it to me one more time. Let’s make it yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next updates may take longer as I am trying to plan out more of the plot. Please bear with me, but the comments and kudos are always appreciated.


	6. Chapter 6

Late that night, Shiro left Keith to sleep, the revised speech in hand. He began the relatively slow and awkward job of dealing with how the layers of his uniform tucked around the casing of the new stump. It was a shame, he couldn’t help but think, that they couldn’t find a a way to save his natural shoulder joint. It seemed bizarre how short a time ago that it all happened.

“The nerve damage is extensive,” Sam Holt had told him in a room full of doctors. “It is probably best to bring the amputation -” Shiro winced at the term. “- to the shoulder joint where the nerve endings are healthy and can be connected to the prosthetic that the Princess has proposed.”

Around the room, the doctors all nodded. One of the surgeons spoke up, bringing up a schematic on the main display. “We have already been able to remove a limited amount of the metal plating from the paladin suit that fused to the skin, but the next stage involves removing it entirely, along with all other tissue that is no longer connected to healthy nerves and complete the amputation.”

“Multiple surgeries?” Shiro had queried, suddenly wary. 

“Only if we have to. Once we have access we can fuse the internal casing to the scapula and begin integrating the nerve endings to the tech. Then is a matter of connecting the main casing, which will protect the internal mechanisms. It’ll take at least two teams to complete the procedure, but has the least risk of infection.”

Shiro’s lips had pursed. He was hardly fond of surgical intervention. The initial clean up of his stump was uncomfortable at best, and the combination of sedation and local anesthetic left him weak and groggy for the better part of a day. Sam placed a hand on his good shoulder in silent support.

“Unfortunately,” the surgeon continued, “This will require general anesthesia. There are of course risks with this for prolonged periods, but a local or spinal anesthetic isn’t feasible for this type of procedure.”

The following day, he had been taken in at an ungodly early hour of the morning for a disinfectant shower before they hooked him up to the monitoring system in the surgical suite. The excess tubes and monitoring strips taped across his torso and good arm seemed inelegant compared to what Coran had used to patch them all up over their adventures.

Keith was only just visible from the observation room window once Shiro was laid back onto the table, jaw tilted up. He was only temporarily covered, and the cold of the operating table only faded away as the first of the medications put him to sleep. 

From the observation room, Keith had hovered with a concerned look on his face. He had shown up anyways, although all of the paladins had been told not to come until Shiro was through the procedure. The anesthesiologist had inserted a device down Shiro’s throat to maintain his airway, and when they rolled him to the side onto a brace to make his right shoulder accessible to work on, the left arm flopped in spite of the IV and monitoring equipment, muscles totally lax.

Sam shooed Keith away with a promise that he would be the first to be called if there was news. Hunk and Lance intercepted him outside the medical centre and dragged him off for physical training, encouraging Keith to take out his nervousness in the gym.

They followed him back shortly before noon, and Sam reluctantly let them into the observation room again. Shiro was still there, mostly hidden under sterile sheets, only his right shoulder exposed. The humerus was gone, with a piece of white metal being fitted into the old joint. Hunk lurched behind them and had to leave the room, stomach churning angrily. 

Pidge arrived to drag her father off to eat before his part of the procedure, casting concerned eyes over Keith. 

By mid afternoon, the second team monitored by Sam had carefully threaded the minute nerve bundles into the internal mechanism. Pidge had returned with Allura in tow, they hauled Keith and Lance to a conference room they had appropriated, where Hunk had laid out a small spread of food. Keith wasn’t hungry in the least, but was cajoled into a light meal. There was still potentially hours to go before the surgery was complete.

As the afternoon transitioned into the evening, the surgical team had finished most of the work, carefully positioning the main casing over the shoulder and sealing the transition between metal and flesh and wrapping it in dressings.

Keith barely noticed himself holding his own breath as they gently removed the medical respirator from Shiro’s face, replacing it with a simple oxygen mask as Shiro coughed weakly, muscle control slowly returning. He had made it, and should be fine.

The group was told not to come back until the next morning. Shiro was going to be monitored and helped to sleep off the initial pain and discomfort overnight in quarantine. 

The next morning, they all dutifully arrived, and found that Shiro had been dressed overnight in soft cotton pants and a tank top that covered the medical monitoring strips that has been adhered to his chest. The outermost casing had been snugged on over the joint, protecting the raw flesh below.

From the intercom, they could hear Sam and his team monitoring Shiro, as the last of the sedatives wore off and he began to stir awake and groaned. But sure enough, his eyes cracked open, to see Sam pulling on fresh gloves. 

“How are you feeling Shiro?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished editing this tonight and started the edit on the next chapter, although once I start working on chapter 9 there may be some minor changes. Kudos and comments appreciated as always.


	7. Chapter 7

Splashing water on his face, Shiro tried to clean up as best he could, before heading out from the quarters he was issued at the base and making way to the hospital. The paladins, his teammates, would be sheltered in their rooms from the scrutiny of the crowd from the safety of their hospital beds, surrounded by family and loved ones. They had done enough, they did not need to be at the memorial.

He made his rounds, speaking for a while with each of them. Keith was again fast asleep, tired out from being kept up the night before with helping Shiro edit the speech. Krolia and Kolivan both told him to stop worrying and get on his way. He reluctantly nodded, and left the hospital complex to be driven to the memorial site, where the lions had been lined up behind the stage.

An employee from one of the many media outlets pulled him aside, dusting his face with powder to help against the glare of the sun being caught on camera. He sneezed off to the side, but shook it off and moved towards the stairs, tablet gripped tightly in his hand. There was people as far as he could see out, and he moved towards the podium. He nodded to the admirals seated near the end, and glanced at the portraits lined up on the stage.

He could do this. Taking in a deep breath, he pulled the revised speech up and looked out, and began to talk.

\---

From the security of the hospital, the paladins listened in.

Hunk was still tired, and prone to headaches, but the surprise of Shay arriving brought tears of happiness. Pidge, finally reunited with her brother and his comrades, watched on with their family dog at her feet. Lance cuddled with his niece as the family watched the feed. Coran and Romelle joined Allura in her room, air sweetened with the light scent of lilies.

And finally, Keith woke in time to hear the last of the speech, his mother smiling approvingly.

\---

The following day, all but Hunk and Keith had been released. Hunk just needed another day, but Keith was stuck at the hospital for a few more, still showing a deep fatigue that he couldn’t shake, even as the head injury healed. Shiro was content to keep Keith company in the evenings. Long days of clean up and meetings left him mentally exhausted, but venting his frustrations from the safety of Keith’s lone presence gave him the fortitude to keep going. Especially now that Slav had arrived and the urge to throttle the owl-ferret thing was a daily occurrence once again.

It was going to be a long process, but already it was remarkable how resilient the people of Earth were proving. Markets sprung up, and construction began to replace all that had been destroyed.

Shiro’s tablet bleeped with a mail notification. Keith had been fiddling with it, finally authorized to read for longer periods now that he no longer got headaches almost constantly. His violet eyes caught the notification display momentarily, a line of Japanese text.

“Hey, you got an email in Japanese,” Keith said, tossing the tablet in Shiro’s direction, who caught it in his hand, but there was a moment of dread that flashed over his face.

“Probably just spam. I forgot that I had reactivated my old personal account.”

“From before you came over for school? I don’t remember you ever using something other than your Garrison issued personal and official accounts.”

“Something like that. As I said, it’s mostly spam now. Might be media from back home trying to find me too though, although they should know that they have to contact the Garrison.” He set the tablet aside.

“You know, other than going out for dinner, I can’t say I ever remember you speaking Japanese. You don’t have an accent.”

“I attended an international school before I came over when I was 12. I guess using English is now just a habit,” Shiro shrugged, hoping it didn't looked forced. “Lance doesn’t have an accent either. Or Hunk.”

“I guess that’s true,” Keith agreed.

“My reading is rusty,” Shiro confessed. “I did only about half of the language studies before I stopped. There are days I swear I read more Altean, although you all got way better than me.”

“Hah, that's a lie. We all hugged Pidge the day that she managed to program some of the displays to be bilingual.”

“Oh whatever, it took longer than that for helmet displays to come up properly. We all knew ‘External oxygen levels low’ well before she managed it.”

“Only because no one could figure out why our helmets couldn't unseal.”

“I don't think Hunk was ever so happy to get back to his lion whenever that came up.”

They both looked at each other and burst into laughter, Keith eventually wiping away a tear of mirth.

“But seriously,” Keith started, “I'm not one to speak but you even use the English “r” sound for your name now.”

Shiro’s lips quirked. “I think I got too used to people mispronouncing it. It's been forever since someone used anything other than my surname, or to be honest the short form based on it, anyways.”

“Adam was the only one who called you by your given name consistently,” Keith recalled.

Shiro had to take a deep breath. “I hope you realize that we were roommates when we were 14. Flight partners at about the same time.”

Keith snorted. “Sure, you were.”

“We didn't start finally dating until our last year as cadets. Trust me, we took our time. Maybe too much,” Shiro sighed, emotions running strong.

“He would have been so proud of you today,” Keith whispered. Shiro turned away from him without warning, eyes filling with tears.

“I… I can't-” Shiro choked a small sob back from his seat. Keith pushed aside the blankets, glad that they had finally given him proper shorts instead of just a patient gown, and after stepping off the bed, nudged Shiro to one side of the so-called family chair. He wedged his hips down, sitting next to Shiro and pulled him into an embrace.

“Shhh. You don't have to justify it to me,” Keith said gently.

And Shiro finally let the tears run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of have a head canon that Shiro's education must have been primarily in English from a young age, based on the lack of accent, and his fairly consistent use of the English "r" sound when saying his own name. I could have sworn there was a flashback at some point where he introduces himself with his full name, but repeatedly rewatching certain clips from S7 while writing this has meant that I am not sure of myself right now. 
> 
> Anyways, if it was getting to become a global standard to do education in English from a young age, it would explain why other characters who are canonically from non-English speaking countries, like Lance, also don't have an accent.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos much appreciated.
> 
> PS. Hah! I knew it! Shiro's arm was handcuffed to his belt in Ep 7-3. Moving on...


	8. Chapter 8

The following weeks were busy, with the lions being used to assist with the clean up efforts. The Atlas, back to its, er, intended configuration, was in dry dock for repairs. Shiro was summoned periodically to approve plans and authorize further upgrades. Eventually, the intent was to take her up to space again and see what all the ship was indeed capable of.

Eventually.

The benefits of hindsight was that Shiro was now acutely aware of how much the ship’s transformation following the battle with Sendak had taken out of him. He had already long since been exhausted and battered by the time he made it back up to the bridge. Channeling his quintessance into the ship so soon after his revival was just icing on the cake. As wary as he was of the medical staff’s preoccupation with him and the other paladins, if they could take advantage of the ability to take some better precautions within reason this time around, he really hoped that he could avoid collapsing each time the Atlas transformed.

He had avoided going in for a new baseline medical, although the scans they did before the shoulder surgery probably had enough data to determine if the clone’s body might someday show signs of the degenerative condition his original body suffered from. It had only began to acutely manifest in his right arm before Kerberos, and the first prosthetic, for all its issues, brought him almost a year of near normalcy in that regard.

Keith had finally been liberated from the hospital, nearly a full week after the others. He and his mother had gone away for a couple days before returning, and he looked relaxed and at peace for the first time in years. He had been offered work with the Blades, but said that he wanted to focus on Earth for a while yet, and had busied himself on projects with Hunk and Lance.

So it was a bit of a surprise when Keith came up with him for a meeting on a coalition ship parked up near one of the moon’s lagrange points. More surprising was that he didn’t insist on taking them up in the black lion. It was slightly surreal, both of them in Garrison issued pressure suits instead of paladin armour in the small shuttle. 

The meeting ran short for once, and the two of them found themselves looking out a window from an observation area on the way back towards the hangar. 

“I thought I had seen enough of the stars for a while,” Keith joked with a hint of dark humour, “But I guess not, even after nearly being stranded in space without the lions.”

Shiro barely recalls the incident, having been frozen in place in Green’s cockpit as one of the victims of the strange burst of radiation that affected him through his unsealed armour. He can only offer an awkward chuckle back in return but then has a thought. He leads Keith back towards the hangar, but instead of going to their shuttle he motions towards the maintenance bay off to the side.

“What are you doing?” Keith asks as he fiddles with the helmet seal out of nervous habit.

“Oh just an idea I had,” Shiro replies, cryptic but with a hint of mischief in his voice as he bats Keith’s hands from his helmet. “Stop playing with it. The seal is fine, but only if you don’t muck with it.” 

Keith self consciously folds his arms across his chest, not entirely convinced, but watches Shiro pull out what looks to be a couple lengths of tether cable.

“Come here,” Shiro snags a clip onto Keith’s suit harness connection and repeats with his own.

“Seriously?” Keith wines, but he follows Shiro to the closest airlock. The lock cycles and Shiro clips the other end of the tethers to a connection port just outside before reorienting himself into a quasi seated position a few metres away. Adding another clip to the tether, he fixes himself to a small hand hold so that at most he floats a foot from the hull surface. He makes a “sit here” motion at Keith who just rolls his eyes but pushes off lightly, accepting Shiro’s hand to come to a stop a second later next to him. 

Shiro can hear Keith making a small grunt over the comm as he makes a slightly inelegant transition to clip himself next to Shiro.

“If you were trying to go for the ‘stargazing on the roof’ experience, we could have just gone out to my dad’s old shack,” Keith says neutrally. 

“Unless you redid the roof on it in the last couple weeks without telling anyone, I seem to recall that it probably wouldn’t be able to hold either of our weight and that was years ago now,” Shiro replied, head up and admiring the view. “Besides, no one expects us back for another couple hours.”

It didn’t pick up on the comm, but Keith’s chest rose in a deep breath, some of the tension loosening although he needed to hold an arm back to keep from drifting into an odd angle. Even after countless EVAs, maneuvering in microgravity was awkward at best, and an art to master. The paladin armour had better controls than the current Garrison suits, but it wasn’t really an issue out here in relative safety.

“It’s nice to have some quiet again,” Keith’s voice was low enough that the mic barely picked it up to relay it through Shiro’s helmet.

“It sure is.” Keith was definitely the most introverted of the gang, but Shiro had also been feeling the strain of constantly being surrounded by others since their arrival. But closing himself off in his quarters just brought back memories, and he didn’t feel prepared to deal with his past quite fully yet. Being busy was a good excuse but it was draining.

It wasn’t just thoughts of Adam, although it certainly felt like his presence followed Shiro throughout the Garrison complex from years of memories of their years together as cadets and officers. Perhaps, as they rebuilt more bases, they could all transfer to another location where the work would be the same, but the ghosts of the past couldn’t haunt them quite as readily.

Well, most of his ghosts anyways.

The two of them ‘sat’ there, lost in thoughts for nearly an hour, before they made their way back inside and then back down to Earth on their shuttle. In the locker room, Shiro was peeling out of his suit as Keith pulled out his uniform before turning to him. “Thanks, Shiro,” he started, “I think I needed that more than I realized.”

“I think we both did, although if we make it a habit I think someone will catch on.”

“Slav would probably have a heart attack just thinking about how it increases the odds of you getting killed in this reality,” Keith joked.

Shiro groaned theatrically, eyes rolling as he hung the suit up. “Why thank you, mister mood killer. You mentioned Slav. I sure hope you’re satisfied.” He shoved his feet into the boots before taking the uniform tunic in his hands and only just a little over dramatically leaving Keith behind.

“He still wants to check out your new arm!” was all he heard along with a cackle of laughter as he let the locker room door close with a loud thud behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are sort of doing a 'blink blink', yes I merged the first two chapters because they were very short and added another tonight. I have another chapter mostly completed but I will be out tomorrow evening so am spreading out the updates.


	9. Chapter 9

Test number 2 (because the scientists and engineers had declared the battle with Sendak to be the first real test) of the Atlas didn’t go like he had hoped. Shiro was starting to get really sick of this hindsight thing coming back to bite him.

Oh, they got the ship up to orbit, no problems. The hard work with the rather remarkable team that had come together to get her space worthy again had paid off. Keith had temporarily taken over helm duties although Shiro was convinced it was only so that he could keep an eye on him (“Dude, from what I heard you dropped like a sack of potatoes after last time.”) in addition to the frustratingly large team of flight surgeons who were morbidly curious about the physical toll the Atlas could inflict on him.

Amazingly, he had convinced Sam Holt to go to bat for him, and a compromise of a heart rate monitor and blood glucose monitor was all he was hooked up to after a long argument with the one doctor who wanted to measure almost everything that could be measured.

“Let’s be clear,” Shiro had muttered during an early planning meeting. “It’s a flight test. We want to get Atlas up into orbit, checked out for its initial purpose, and only then-” Shiro glared, “- will we see if we can get the Atlas to transform. If it can again at all. We don’t even know that yet.”

“Shiro’s right,” Sam chimed in, “We need to make sure that the Atlas is safe in its main configuration. We assumed because there was no major issues during the battle that all primary and secondary systems were functioning correctly, but we barely made it to upper atmosphere. We need to get her into full vacuum and make sure that recent, um, modifications, haven’t caused any issues we haven’t anticipated.”

“We don’t have enough data to know what the physical demands are on you unless we can get a baseline,” a doctor complained.

Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ve been over this, I’d really rather not sit through a full day of flight system checks while hooked up to half the medical lab. It’s overkill.”

The doctor started rattling off his arguments. “The last time, you were hospitalized for two days due to exhaustion, severe hypoglycemia -”

“Half of which was probably because we had been battling an entire Galra armada for hours by that point,” Shiro shot back. “Then,” he paused for emphasis, “I EVA’d to a Galra ship, let Sam Holt use my brain as a computer terminal, and fought Sendak as we plummeted to Earth. And only then did I make a magical connection with a battleship.”

The doctor looked to protest, but Shiro cut him off with a raised voice, the prosthetic hand thumping on the table for emphasis. “There was some mitigating factors at hand even before the Atlas suddenly channeled Altean magic and transformed.”

He didn’t realize that he was standing until Keith had placed his hand on his good shoulder and without words prompted him to sit down and try to take a deep breath.

“Look,” Keith said, channeling his best leader voice in spite of being the only one in cadet orange in the room, “As Shiro said, this is primarily a test of the Atlas’ basic systems. Let’s focus on getting her up and running, and then see what we can get her to do.”

Based on the reluctant agreement from the medical team, Shiro felt mostly vindicated.

“But Shiro will wear the basic medical monitors,” Keith added.

Traitor.

\---

The morning was filled with Shiro largely pacing the bridge, looking over at consoles as the primary systems were tested from the ground. Everyone sealed their pressure suits for the ascent to high Earth orbit, and the ship went up to almost two atmospheres in the hull pressure tests. Other than a minor seal issue with a secondary hangar door, there was no issues, and they all gladly ditched their helmets once the environmental controls were returned to Earth norms.

One by one, everything that they had either repaired or not had time to test in the chaos of battle was checked out. The work was tedious but went smoothly. Pidge and Hunk helped Sam and Coran in Engineering, Lance worked on checklists in the armoury, and Allura was part of a team coordinating all the different groups.

It was going surprisingly efficiently. He was trying his best not to rub at the glucose monitor adhered to his left bicep, the small device slightly visible as a bump under the arm of the pressure suit. At one point a couple hours ago he had been handed another relatively carb heavy meal and he was sure there was someone watching to see how it was affecting his blood sugars.

He got it, they were trying to do their due diligence, but the flight surgeons were really starting to get on his nerves. Keith, sensing that Shiro needed some space, hauled him back to a small meeting space off the bridge to eat their lunch, Sam eventually joining them, gladly discussing the responsiveness of the flight controls with Keith.

By mid afternoon, they had completed as much of the systems checks as they could that day, and the whole gang came up to the bridge. 

“There is no reason why we can’t give it a shot,” Pidge said, methodically cleaning her glasses. “I still can’t figure out what exactly triggered it the last time around, but with us monitoring both the computer systems and engineering, we might get better insight.”

“Or it might not work at all,” Hunk chimed in. “Who knows if it was a one time thing triggered by a combo of the crystal from the castle and Shiro’s stress.”

“I mean, if it happened once, why wouldn’t it be possible for it to happen again?” Lance said thoughtfully.

“What about Shiro?” Keith asked. “We assume that under ideal circumstances it won’t be too taxing. But if something happens mid transformation…”

Shiro groaned. Keith was getting to be almost as bad as the doctors.

“Look, I agreed to get monitored. They’ve been staring at my vitals all day. And I’m nowhere near as tired as I was that day. I’ll be fine.”

“Once the process starts, we may not be able to stop it,” Allura warns. She had been relatively quiet in the conversation, thoughtful and deliberate in her word choices, but everyone shifted uncomfortably. Shiro shuffled to his feet abruptly, adjusting how the chest plate of his suit sat and moved to the central console bank, as most of the team headed out to return to the engineering bay.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

\---

It took a while, and Shiro had to channel almost everything he remembered from their initial attempts to bond with the lions as he reached out, trying to connect with the mind of the ship. It had come so much more naturally, although unexpectedly, during the battle and he had nearly given up out of frustration, a stress headache building behind his temples, when it suddenly happened.

He connected with the Atlas. Almost like the first time, he almost didn’t know what to make of it. It was as though someone had flipped a switch, and the ship lit up in outlines of Altean blue that only he could see or sense.

He could vaguely hear the voices of others on the bridge, as though they were in another room instead of feet away from him. Keith was visible from the helm, a sea of concentration in an ocean of chatter. Reaching out to Atlas’ presence, he coaxed her into showing him everything she had. Proud, and strong, she did just that, and the ship shifted around them as though they were there alone. Almost as miraculous as the first time around, he felt oddly complete, as though he was meant for this. 

The world around him started to shift back into focus, sound rushing back to him like waves. A dozen voices on the bridge sharing reports, and dozens more across the ship and down at the base monitoring every aspect they could measure and quantify. He let the sensation sink in, and tried to block out the excess stimulation. It was almost too much for a single person to handle. The singular focus of the final battle had spared him from noticing just how overwhelming having all of Atlas’s consciousness and senses flowing through him was, and his knees began to wobble underneath him.

An alert sounded near the helm, and Keith snapped around in alarm. He had tied into the flight surgeon’s monitor without Shiro noticing, and raced around the central station of the bridge just in time to catch some of Shiro’s weight as he fell onto his hands and knees.

“Hey!” Keith shouted persistently, breaking through the sound of his pulse racing through his ears as Atlas simultaneously pressed into his mind, concerned.

A medic swooped in and helped Keith unlatch the chest plate of his suit, pulling his good arm out from the sleeve. Atlas started shifting back to her original form around them, and someone pressed a sugary wafer under his tongue as they got him sitting down on the bridge deck, back against Keith’s chest.

Atlas still pressed against his mind, less frantic but no less present. She had hurt him, her sentience moaned. He drooped bonelessly against Keith’s supporting figure, tired but still awake, and all he could do was check one last time if Atlas was fine before the connection broke and the blue overlay faded.

The flight surgeon came into view, with pursed lips that were clearly holding back an “I told you so”, and Shiro let the doctor fuss over him, too exhausted to complain.

“I think,” Shiro said while choking back a weak but dry laugh as the IV line was inserted near the crook of his elbow, “We need to install a chair at this station. Put that on the list.” 

Keith’s eye roll was worth it.


	10. Chapter 10

Lance walked through the hospital ward, counting rooms until he came to the one that Keith listed in his message. They had brought the Atlas down to Earth a couple hours ago, and a still fairly woozy Shiro had been transferred over shortly after.

Keith, the only one out of the core team to be up on the bridge at the time, said that it was the oddest thing. One moment Shiro’s vitals were normal enough while he stood there, staring blankly around the bridge as the ship transformed around them, the next his blood sugar levels had taken a nosedive to dangerous levels. The medic had confirmed that his blood pressure had also gone to shit.

All in all, it took mere minutes. 

Coran and Allura were still meeting with Sam and the medical team, pouring over information. They probably wouldn’t have a report before the next day. Lance knocked softly on the door once, before sliding it open and taking a step inside.

The bed had been laid flat, Shiro curled on to his side facing away from the door. A blanket was pulled up to his ears, and Lance could barely notice his real arm sticking out near the pillow, IV still feeding from a couple different bags of clear fluids. The prosthetic was sitting deactivated on the windowsill, while a monitor quietly hummed in the background, showing a resting heart rate and steady breathing. He was deeply asleep.

Keith looked up from where he was perched on the armchair tucked in the corner of the room. He had hastily dressed in casual clothing before heading over to the hospital, and otherwise all he had with him was a tablet. Lance moved to come in further but Keith shook his head with a finger over his mouth in a “shh” gesture, and quietly got up and lead Lance into the hallway, sliding the door shut behind them.

“Is he going to be okay?” Lance asked.

“Yeah, although they are having trouble balancing his blood glucose levels. Whatever it is that happens when he connects with the Atlas is sending his metabolism into overdrive. It’s like his brain can’t get enough energy all of a sudden. They sent him through some scans, but they want to let him sleep while they review everything. He’s stabilized for now.”

Lance sighed. They had come so far, and what they were doing was obviously endangering Shiro’s hard fought health. “So, hey man, I assume you’re going to camp out here until they kick you out at some point. The mess will close soon, do you want me to pick something up for you?”

Keith looked caught off guard but nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks.”

“Okay, I’ll be back soon. I’ll also let the others know that they should wait until tomorrow to stop by.”

“Probably for the best.”

“‘Kay,” Lance bustled off. Keith grabbed a cup of water from the nursing station for himself and returned to the room. The sun was setting outside, casting long shadows into the dimly lit room. Keith flicked on the reading lamp over the armchair and got settled again, skimming the data feed data from the helm. He had promised to sum up his initial recommendations for the engineers and it looked like he would have plenty of time that night.

Lance was back within a half hour with some food, a couple extra snacks tucked into the bag along with a bottle of tea. Keith sent him on his way, absentmindedly eating as he typed.

Shiro woke up a couple hours later, groggy but could answer questions as the nurse recorded his vitals for the chart. They brought in a bowl of some sort of stew, and he managed to eat most of it before a doctor came in to check on the placement of a couple monitors and recalculate dosages for the IV drip. 

Shiro’s body was still metabolising glucose and other nutrients faster than it should, but the doctor mentioned that there was no indication that his body was producing excess insulin. In the meanwhile, it was going to be a balancing act of IV supplements and regular, small meals until they felt he no longer needed to be continuously monitored.

Shiro had laid down again to sleep, and about an hour later Keith was shooed out for the night just as he was submitting his draft report.

\---

Pidge somehow managed to intercept Keith the next morning, dragging him off not towards the hospital but to a lab complex where her dad had his office. She all but shoved Keith through the door, looking behind them one last time. Allura, Coran, and Sam were seated around the room, and Sam beckoned Keith to take the last seat while Pidge perched on his desk.

“The flight surgeons are concerned,” Sam said, cutting directly to the chase. Keith pursed his lips but gestured to Sam to keep going. “Something about the connection isn’t working the way it should, based on what Allura and Coran know of Altean tech.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s rather obvious,” Keith said tersely.

“Operating the castle of lions or a teladuv is obviously a taxing experience,” Coran piped in. “Not even most Alteans could manage it. But this is beyond what should happen. What we don’t know is if it is Shiro’s physiology, the ship’s tech itself, or some combination of the two.”

“Coran is right,” Allura said as she fiddled with the hem of the uniform jacket. “This is unknown territory. When I was able to transfer his consciousness into this body, I don’t think any of us expected him to interface with Altean tech in this way.”

“And we had assumed when we began to design the Atlas that we wouldn’t be able to count on Altean interfaces,” Sam added. “The ship wasn’t designed to do it naturally. Granted, we also didn’t intend for it to become a giant fighting robot either.” Pidge snorted from the back of the room.

“So why are we all here right now?” Keith queried.

“The admiralty is practically panicking. They don’t like anything they can’t control, and the chief flight surgeon wasn’t convinced by the time we finished looking at the data from yesterday that we could ever operate the Atlas safely. Or at least while Shiro is on it.”

Sam’s assessment hung in the room like a leaded weight.

“Is it just a concern over his ability to manage it?” Pidge asked.

Allura replied. “They feel that the Atlas will probably end up killing Shiro. Without fully prepping him in advance with specialized life support, which Earth technology is not as advanced with, who knows if he could manage the strain?”

Keith sat numbly in the chair. “How likely is it that we will need the Atlas? And I mean it’s advanced capabilities.”

“It’s hard to tell,” Coran responded. “The coalition is rebuilding, but the Galra empire has fractured into factions. There is probably need for Voltron yet, and we need the support of the Atlas to do it. We were told it might be necessary to leave him to coordinate efforts on Earth.”

“Leaving Shiro behind after all this is insane,” Pidge protested. “I am sure we can figure out something.”

“From what I understand, most of the admirals seem determined to find ways to continue on with testing, but there is vocal minority including the chief flight surgeon that feel that Shiro cannot be allowed to step foot on the Atlas until we know a transformation can’t kill him,” Sam said solemnly. “I don’t know if that is possible.”

Keith unclenched his hands from where he had been grasping at his knees. “Did they figure out what caused the problems with his metabolism? The doctor that came in last night didn’t have much to go on.”

“They think this body might have had gene therapy that now manifests in an unintended way. They ran a sample against one from Shiro before the Kerberos mission. It was subtle, but a difference.”

Keith looked up, startled. “His degenerative condition. They did fix it.”

“And now it may be what could kill him.”


	11. Chapter 11

It took the better part of a day for Shiro’s metabolic rate to stabilize. They replaced the blood glucose monitor on his arm with another installed against the side of his chest, underneath the prosthetic stump where it was less prone to rubbing, issued a monitoring bracelet, and passed him a pouch with emergency glucose strips.

Shiro was convinced it was all a bit of overkill, but it meant that he didn’t need to stay in the hospital either. He was sent back to his quarters.

Keith had already sent him a message, saying that he should just lay low. Shiro wasn’t sure what sort of shit storm was brewing, but aside from Hunk dropping off a meal, he didn’t see any of the gang until the next day, when a signed leave pass somehow turned up in his official inbox, superseding the medical leave orders that said he wasn’t to leave the base. Without warning, Keith showed up within minutes to spirit him off to the shack in the desert with Cosmo in tow before he managed to ask any questions.

Somehow, Keith had been given what looked like an alarming amount of medical supplies, in boxes labeled in Pidge’s quick but neat block script. He carried most of it inside in the first couple loads, before rummaging through a duffle bag and passing Shiro more comfortable clothes than his garrison uniform.

“What’s the meaning of all this?” Shiro finally asked, trying to find a comfortable spot on the battered couch. Cosmo curled up at his feet.

“Sam and Allura both think it’s best for you to be away from the base for a while. The admiralty and doctors are bickering over what to do with you next.”

“What?” Shiro’s face paled.

“Within hours of the test, the admiralty split into two factions. One that is convinced that any further tests will probably get you killed, and another that is determined to continue on with the tests regardless,” Keith explained, as he flipped breakers in the electrical panel. The fridge hummed to life from the kitchen and a lamp flickered on.

“How in the hell did you get me a leave pass?”

“Pidge really does do computer magic.” Oh course. Shiro should have known that.

“Who all knows exactly where we are?”

“Just Sam, Pidge and I. Mom would figure it out too, although she is off world right now. Allura and Coran know we’ve come out but they don’t know where it is. Pidge managed to purge it from my juvenile records, so even if someone remembers that I had inherited the property it might take a while to look it up through other records. I’m sure they will figure it out eventually but we figure we have a couple days at least to see if things calm down.”

“So what’s with the small infirmary that you packed in?”

“Precautions. We didn’t expect you to get released from the hospital so soon. About 5 minutes after we left this morning Pidge scrambled the signal from your monitors so it now only reads on my phone.”

Shiro looked at the boxes more carefully. Saline and glucose solutions, IV kits and a pump, even an emergency respirator. Probably enough to keep him alive until someone else could arrive if something happened.

“Look,” Keith said, flopping on to the couch next to him, “It’s just a theory, and Coran and Sam are back at the base investigating if it is even a possibility, but we think the clone body may have been genetically tweaked just a little back when it was created.” He took a deep breath, staring at the ceiling. “It might have given the clone body an immunity to your degenerative condition.”

Shiro stared blankly into the kitchen, not sure how to react.

“Genetics are quirky, Sam tried to explain to me before it got too technical. What fixed one thing might have made you susceptible to other issues. And the Galra probably never guessed if we stuffed your consciousness into this body via Altean magic courtesy of Allura that you would later be able to make a ship powered with the crystal remains of the castle of lions transform into a giant robot. And that this would trigger a metabolic surge that would drain you of energy,” Keith’s lips quirked. “It all sounds so implausible.”

“Do we know this for sure?” Shiro asked in a dull voice.

“Not yet. But if the Garrison comes to the same conclusion…”

“Right.”

“So what I’m trying to get at, is that they aren’t really sure how this minor tweak in your genetic code will affect you long term. But if we work on the assumption that it is the cause of the issues, it only seems to trigger if and when you connect mentally with the Atlas. And until we know that there aren’t certain admirals who are intent on forcing you to go through inhumane testing to ensure we can make the Atlas transform at will in spite of all of this, well, we thought it was best to get you away from their eyes for a while.”

“I - I need to lay down for a while,” Shiro pulled himself up from the couch, shuffling Cosmo aside, and made his way towards the bedrooms without another word, the door creaking as it shut.

Keith sighed, but got up to go off load the rest of the food and supplies they brought.

\---

For the next two days, Shiro basically kept to himself, rarely spending time other than on the porch (“Hey Shiro, if you're going to sit out here all day, at least wear sunscreen man. I don’t know what they did to the clone but you can’t tan for shit anymore.”) or the small bedroom. Cosmo, probably picking up on Keith’s concern, tailed him almost everywhere. Keith did his best to follow the meal plan that Hunk had thrown together, packing up small meals and resurrecting an old freezer that had been stuffed away in a shed to hold others in case they ended up there longer term.

He knew that eventually Shiro would feel up to talking with him about what was bothering him, although the main cause was somewhat obvious.

To maintain their security, Keith hadn’t reconnected the communications link at the house, relying instead on an encrypted receiver Matt Holt had passed him as they pulled together supplies in that frantic night. Pidge was using it sparingly at most, so when his phone buzzed he quickly pulled it out. It could either be a message from Pidge, or a medical alert for Shiro. Instead it was a message from Sam.

<<You two have been reported missing by the Garrison. There is a small group who have assumed dominance over the admiralty, and they are determined to continue testing Shiro’s connection with the Atlas as soon as you can be found. Katie and the others have been brought in for questioning. Don’t count on the lions. Everyone is on the same page, but expect to have to move within 24 hours. Don’t hesitate to go sooner if you feel it is required, but stay on planet. Garrison is very carefully monitoring all travel into orbit but still doesn’t have jurisdiction over what civilian travel is still operating.>>

Crap.

He stepped back into the house and made his way to the door to room in the back that Shiro had taken over. He pushed the door open - Shiro was napping on his side, good arm wrapped loosely around Cosmo who was splayed out on his back. Cosmo jerked awake, teleporting behind Keith. The sudden movement woke Shiro up, who rubbed at his eyes and rolled over to sit up.

“We need to figure out an exit strategy. They will probably be coming for us soon.”

\---

Keith had all but forced a meal into Shiro’s hands. The glucose monitor was reading low enough to just indicate that he hadn’t eaten most of his breakfast hours ago. Shiro gave him a weary look in return but ate most of it without complaint.

“The Holts mentioned before we left that there might be some distant relatives of theirs in Europe we could go to, but it’s close to another Garrison base and transatlantic shuttles are still limited.”

“What about Matt’s ship?” Shiro asked, voice still scratchy from his nap.

“Pidge got pulled in for questioning, and best to assume she is detained. Unless she can manage to spring the green lion from the Garrison remotely again, we don’t have a cloaked ship that can come take us up there. They said it wasn’t a viable option.”

“So Europe is out,” Shiro thought out loud.

“Do we have any connections in South America? I don’t really.”

“No, just some Garrison contacts. I honestly don’t know where we could go. Actually, no, I have an idea,” Shiro contemplated. “No one at the Garrison who knows me at all would think that I’d do this, it might work.”

“What’s that?”

“Go back home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has turned out to be more of a beast of a fanfic than I planned, but I am starting to get ahead a little so I can come back a couple chapters and tweak things as I write without mucking with things that are already posted. At this rate I'm guessing it's now looking more like 20 chapters in total, although we all know how that worked for me last time I guessed how long this would end up.
> 
> There is no way that 90% of this plot will ever hold up when Season 8 eventually gets released, but it's been an interesting experience trying to reconcile a few of my headcanons in the same fic. 
> 
> Thanks for all the comments and kudos, it's kept me motivated to continue.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, I've tried to use << >> marks to denote speech in languages other than English. My grammar editor hates it, so there might be some minor inconsistencies with capitalization that I missed in editing. Anything that I write out phonetically is not especially important to the plot and is usually just greetings.

They spent most of the afternoon repacking the basics before Keith lugged most of the spare non perishable supplies into the storm shelter below the house. It would be obvious that someone had been around recently, but he was hoping the Garrison would assume it was Krolia. Cosmo was sent to Romelle, who was probably unimpressed but was the only one who hadn’t apparently been rounded up.

They made it as far as San Francisco via a couple small civilian flights that night. A sweatshirt over Shiro’s arm deflected the worst of the looks, although their old passports didn’t much look like themselves and they got enough grief at the security gates that they agreed that they needed to do something to make themselves feel less conspicuous. The booked into a hotel near the airport using a special bank account that Pidge had created, and Keith quietly made a purchase of black hair dye and some supposedly high coverage concealer. 

Keith hadn’t realized just how quickly he had grown used to Shiro’s stark white hair until it was returned to black. Experimenting with the makeup meant that he looked instantly more like his pre-Kerberos mission self, although still weary in spirit. Keith’s scar was harder to hide, but it was better than nothing. 

They had to leave some of the medical supplies behind, the permits to carry them on the flights too much effort to attempt. Keith figured that as long as they more or less treated Shiro like a type two diabetic, there was almost nothing to indicate that he had been seriously ill just a few days ago. They boarded the flight, and a short five hours later arrived near Tokyo.

\---

Shiro’s Japanese wasn’t as rusty as he claimed, Keith quickly realized, but he told a puzzled station employee that he was Nikkei, from America, when he was asked how his English was so good. The story was plausible enough. He had wanted to get the reserved tickets on the high speed train bought before getting a burner connection chip for his phone. Syncing up a contact list from his personal tablet, he shooed Keith from hovering right next to him and initiated a call, speaking in a low voice into the receiver.

“ _ Moshi moshi? _ ” 

“ _ Moshi moshi, Shirogane Kazuko desu. _ ” Shiro glanced up at Keith, nodding briefly.

“ _ Ah, Kazuko-san. Shirogane Takashi desu. Ohisashiburi. _ ” He turned a bit away from Keith, who was obviously trying to listen in.

<<Takashi?!>>   


<<Uh yeah, it’s me. I know I’m being a bother, for which I apologize->>

<<No, no, it’s no bother. I just wasn’t expecting it. I haven’t heard your voice in years, except in the recent news clips.>>

<<Ah well, it’s been a long time since I’ve been back,>> he replied.

<<You’re in Japan?>> She slipped into formal Japanese, probably from habit, and Shiro took a moment to think the grammar through.

<<Uh, yes. It’s a long story, but my, uh->> he struggled for the right word, <<-colleagues decided that I should get away from things for a while. It has been very busy.>>

<<I am at work right now, but where are you?>>

<<Shin-Narita airport. I thought it best to come straight to Izu.>>

<<I’m in Kanagawa for business, but I can be down tonight. Are you going straight to your parents? They haven’t mentioned anything that I had heard.>>

<<Oh, probably not right away. I was not able to reach them,>> Shiro lied.

<<Look, your father normally refuses to talk about you still, but my brother has been working in Tokyo, so my branch’s family home is vacant. I can send you the access code.>>

<<Why is it vacant?>> Shiro startled.

<<Mother and Father passed away a year ago in an accident. The business was taken over in the invasion and one of the factories had an industrial incident. We are still getting under our feet, but will persevere,>> Kazuko said. 

<<Oh, I see.>> Kazuko’s father and his were cousins, and for his family, fairly close. Family dinners with them were some of the few happier memories of his childhood.

They tied up a few details, and Kazuko sent him the access code. The trip to Izu was quick, and after a quick stop to pick up a couple meals, Shiro was able to share the directions to the taxi driver for the last leg, taking them outside the city and to a relatively modest but well built house nestled in a valley. His great uncle had chosen the site long ago, removed just away from the main family home for privacy from what he long called “the eternal family argument”. 

Shiro could appreciate his great uncle’s sentiment. The family had a network of industrial businesses scattered across central Japan. It was just assumed that anyone that was capable would take over and expand them, as they had for generations. Every generation there was usually at least one who broke the mould. Shiro just did it a bit more dramatically than most.

He let him and Keith into the house. Traditional in build on the first floor, there was still futons tucked away in an oshi-ire closet, and after finding the gas connection, the small water tank began to heat up bath water. 

Letting the bath fill, he washed down with tepid water, scrubbing at his hair until it felt clean. Some residue from the dye came off, and he wondered how long it would last. Finally feeling clean, although chilled, he lowered himself into the hot bath up to where the monitor was stuck to his chest and let out a long sigh. The warmth seeped into his bones, relaxing his muscles. He reluctantly pulled out of the bath as his toes began to prune, and got dressed in fresh clothes, pulling a hanten jacket that he had found in the closet with the futons over him to ward off the evening chill. The stiff, quilted fabric also helped to hide the missing upper arm better than his sweatshirt had.

He gave Keith quick instructions on the bath, told him to wash up quickly while the water was still warm. He picked at some food while Keith cleaned up, and smirked a little when he stumbled into the room, dizzy from sitting in the hot bath water too long.

“Did you heat the water up after you were done?” Keith gasped from where he laid sprawled out over the futon, radiating warmth.

“No,” Shiro chuckled. “It’s supposed to be like that.”

“I thought I had burned myself when I got in. And now I’m not sure if it dissolved the bones in my legs.”

“The warmth is supposed to relax you for the night.”

Keith had somehow maneuvered the covers over himself without dislodging the towel around his waist. “All I want to do is sleep,” he yawned. The time change was getting to them both.

Shiro’s phone buzzed from where it was charging, and he let the translation app convert the text to English automatically out of habit. Kazuko was leaving the train station in the city. “Keith, my cousin is on her way. Get decent before you scar her with your half-alien unmentionables.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is trying to figure out how this chapter was researched, I lived overseas in Japan for some time and still do a lot of things with the cultural association to keep up my language skills. I definitely miss having a soaking tub.
> 
> Kazuko is an original character who is Shiro's second cousin, they share paternal line great grandparents. I don't want to spoil anything else, as we will get to know her more in the next few chapters.
> 
> I was re-watching a couple episodes this morning before I went out to meet a friend for lunch - I gotta say I love how Shiro's humour tends towards the darker side reasonably often. I try to capture that essence periodically, and coming up with zingy lines I think his character would say in the show under these circumstances is a nice challenge between resolving plot holes I've created for myself.
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated as always.


	13. Chapter 13

Shiro wasn’t sure what to expect with seeing Kazuko again. She was probably the only one left in the family that he was still on speaking terms with when he had made it clear years ago that attending the Garrison academy was not just a “phase” and that he intended to take his commision and make a career out of being a pilot.

His parents were beyond angry. He was the elder son from the senior line of the family, and it was just assumed that he would take over the most prestigious of the business lines. They had not counted on that when he was sent to a private international school near Tokyo that a teacher from abroad would spark an interest in space and aeronautics from a young age. That same teacher had nominated him for the Garrison academy shortly before he turned 12, and with the help of the principal, convinced his parents that although it would be an unorthodox education, it would be second to none in terms of academics and leadership.

True enough, after a short adjustment period while getting used to living away from Japan, he thrived in the academy. Even as the earliest signs of the degenerative condition that occasionally left his right arm prickly began to manifest, he was pushed by his instructors and he broke flight records every year.

And Adam, first a classmate, then his room mate, and later then his flight partner, was always there for him, an anchor in his life that matched the English expression that sometimes the best family is the ones you choose. By sixteen, they had come out separately, and a year later they finally admitted their feelings for each other.

Graduation should have been a happier occasion. Shiro’s mother came alone, and spent most of the week telling him which positions he had been earmarked for when he returned, as soon as he completed a few business courses. Shiro, having just turned 18, had signed his own enlistment papers and had a tentative offer for a pilot position. He was elated, it was exactly what he wanted and he fully intended to pursue it as long as he could.

She yelled for hours, admonishing him for giving up on a family that she insisted had done so much for him. When Adam eventually intervened, she only then realized that he was also gay.

The fallout was spectacular. She left within an hour, but by the next day, there was a long and formal letter in his personal inbox from his father and grandfather with the ultimatum: come home now alone, and do as he was expected, or be disowned.

After a long series of meetings with the Garrison, a lawyer, and then eventually a heart to heart talk with Adam, he sent his response.

<<I need to do what is right for me, and I hope someday you can respect my decision.>>

He didn’t realize that those words would be repeated only a few years later.

A couple years later, he had a handful of missions relatively close to Earth under his belt. Adam was still active as a pilot, but was taking on more and more teaching responsibilities. He was less interested in the space exploration aspect of the Garrison’s work, but supported Shiro until his condition started to more acutely manifest.

Around the same time, he had been sent out to local schools to recruit promising students, and he met Keith. Although by different circumstances, the loneliness the young boy radiated acutely reminded Shiro of himself, and he was determined to be a mentor in the same way that his teacher had been so many years ago.

When his medical status nearly got him pulled from the Kerberos mission, Adam began to become more adamant that he needed to put himself first for once, to prevent his condition from accelerating. Shiro knew that someday, someone like Keith would come along to wipe his records off the wall, he wanted one more chance to make his mark and contribute to the expansion of human knowledge before probably having to retire to teaching for the rest of the time he had left.

“Adam, I know hope someday you can respect my decision, but I need to do what is right for me. And in this case, I need to go on this mission.”

It was just as hard to say, and hurt just as much, but he threw himself into the preparations for the mission, and before he knew it, him and and the Holts were there. They were the furthest any humans had been from Earth. He had made it.

\---

Galaxies worth of exploring later, Shiro was digging through the small kitchen to find some tea as Kazuko came in through the back door. Relatively tall, her black hair laid straight down her back. She left her shoes outside and pulled on socks as she made her way towards him. She was still in a suit, but the bright blazer in golden yellow was a distinct contrast to Shiro’s memories of his parents, always dressed in dark colours.

“Takashi,” she said, looking at him from head to toe.

“Kazuko,” he replied back.

<<You tried to dye your hair. It was white in the most recent news clips.>>

<<Well, to be fair, my passport photo wasn’t up to date.>>

She paused for a moment, but broke out into a snicker. <<I suppose that is true.>>

<<Ah, I’m sorry, come in. I was just looking for tea.>>

<<Oh, uh, let me grab it. Tetsuro’s wife always seems to hide it in the freezer. She swears it keeps better, although I have told her that’s only really necessary for matcha,>> Kazuko moved past him, pulling a packet from the door of the small freezer and moving towards where the teapot and cups were in a cupboard.

<<I can do it, you just got in,>> he protested.

<<No, it’s fine, really,>> she replied, pulling off her coat, flecked with a misting of water from the light rain that had just started outside. Shiro grabbed the coat, and put it away before helping her place everything onto a tray.>>

<<You said you came with a colleague?>>

<<Yes, Keith,>> he replied, using the English pronunciation of the name. <<Another pilot.>>

<<Not Adam?>> she inquired. Shiro paled. They wouldn’t have known.

<<He died shortly after the invasion,>> was all he could think to say.

<<Oh. I’m sorry. You sounded so close, last we spoke.>>

<<We had been.>>

<<And this Keith?>>

<<Just a friend,>> Shiro said. <<But we’ve been through a lot together. He is a valued comrade.>>

Shiro heard a shoji door sliding nearby. Keith looked around the corner, more respectably dressed in dark cotton pants and a sweater, and looked at Kazuko before turning to Shiro. “Oh hey, she’s here. I found a table and some cushions in another room.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kazuko spoke up, her English accented only slightly.

“Uh hi, I’m Keith,” he said, putting his hand out for a handshake without thinking about it.

She grasped it only after a moment’s hesitation. “Takashi has spoken well of you. You must excuse my lack of hospitality.”

“Oh no, we’re grateful that we could stay here,” Keith replied sincerely, leading the way to the other room. He had pulled the shoji across to hide where their futons and bags laid.

As they settled on the tatami floor, she set her purse next to her. <<Does he speak Japanese?>> she queries.

“No, he doesn’t,” Shiro replies in English to make a point.

“I see, that is not a problem,” she replies back neutrally. “I’m sorry for assuming,” she says to Keith, head dropping momentarily. Keith knows better than to say anything back.

“I apologize for saying this so bluntly, Takashi, but what brings you here?” Kazuko asks, cutting straight to the point.

“It is a very long story, Kazuko.”

“I left my business in the middle of the week, during a turbulent transition to local government control, to come down to see you. I have all the time in the world,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

“If I may,” Keith interjects. “Maybe tell us what you know. Starting when Takashi -” using his given name feels so weird, “- disappeared during the Kerberos mission.” Kazuko and Shiro locked eyes and Keith could hear both suppress a sigh.

\---

It took hours into the night. Even with copious tea, Keith was drooping. They figured out pretty quickly that Kazuko didn’t know much more than what had been captured in news highlights. Shiro had long ago taken his family off notifications, so his parents never received an official message that he was missing. It was a shock to the extended family, but Kazuko doesn’t remember his parents so much as mentioning it. Anything else, like Sam Holt’s return to Earth, and their own eventual return and battle to free the planet from the Galra was also limited to what was covered by the media.

Shiro tells a rather sanitized version of their story to her. Some of this is now public knowledge, but Keith notices that Shiro does not mention his death, getting his consciousness trapped in the astral plane and then shoved into the body of an evil clone. Or that he could make the Atlas transform.

Shiro called a pause close to 3am. Kazuko went to an upstairs room to sleep, and he finally tossed the futon covers over himself and falls asleep almost instantly, exhausted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting from the pub because I was out all day and am too tired to cook edition. And I wanted to test to see how awkward posting on my tablet is versus my laptop because of an upcoming road trip. Aside from the google overlords being fussy about letting me pull up the most recent version of my working file, I should be good to go to continue posting while I am away even though I'm not sure how much writing I will manage and there may be some delays in the posting frequency around the beginning of next week.
> 
> This chapter was partly written a bit out of order because I realized that I needed to write out some background to further the plot. Part of me hopes that some of it doesn't pan out in the canon once the next season comes out, but it hopefully comes out as plausible enough to explain why there was we never got so much as a whisper about Shiro's family other than his relationship with Adam when S7 was so focused on this theme of returning to family.


	14. Chapter 14

Shiro wakes up about 6 hours later, still a bit groggy but unable to sleep longer. He fumbles to where the prosthetic lays on the tatami, and the touch of his left hand reactivates it. For all its advanced nature, he has found it disconcerting to sleep with it on, as it reacts too readily to whatever he dreams about. He pulls the hanten over him again, drawing the collar closed against the morning chill.

He leaves Keith to continue sleeping on the other futon, and steps out into the garden. He was not terribly surprised to find Kazuko out there, deadheading flowers and pulling the odd weed.

“Ohayo,” he calls out. She bows slightly towards him and he steps out onto the damp grass, enjoying the sensation on bare feet as he walks towards her.

<<You never mentioned what happened to your arm,>> she says. In spite of covering most of it, there was no way she could have missed it.

<<It was hurt in an, uh, incident. Not long after I was captured. But this one is newer,>> he tells her, holding onto the wrist of the prosthetic self consciously.

<<Did it hurt?>> she asks honestly.

<<Yes,>> was all he could think to say in response.

She continues to focus her gaze on the plants she is tending, and he eventually takes the basket for her, letting her fill it with bits of garden waste.

<<My grandfather mentioned a long time ago, before he passed away, that there was a fear that you were ill, back when you were still at the academy.>>

<<Oh. Well, that’s another long story.>>

<<All of yours seem to be.>>

<<Something was causing issues in my arm,>> he says, his unfamiliarity with the right terminology in Japanese forcing him to be more vague. <<Being a pilot was making it worse.>>

Kazuko’s eyes shot up to meet his. <<Your mother knew.>>

Shiro sighed. <<And my father. But by the time it was becoming apparent I was already legally an adult in the eyes of the Garrison. I was able to make my own choices. My condition was only one part of it.>>

<<You never intended to come back home to the business,>> she surmised.

<<I don’t know about that. But I did know that I wanted to at least make a go of what my passion was first. Besides, I seem to recall that you were hardly eager to get into business either.>>

<<The invasion made that choice for me, unfortunately.>>

<<I see,>> he says, genuinely sorry.

<<What about now?>> Kazuko queried. <<Is the condition still progressing?>>

<<It hasn’t bothered me in a long time now,>> he says, and the statement is fundamentally true although not the whole picture.

The two of them go back into the house. Shiro showers quickly and frowns at how the white of his now natural hair colour is already showing through the dye. He shouldn’t have expected much from what Keith bought hastily, but now wishes he had remembered to check if it was formulated to be temporary.

Kazuko pulled together a small breakfast, and Keith was happily scarfing down his portion. Shiro sat down next to him, the rice and pickles a familiar touch.

“I suppose,” Kazuko starts off, “You two should tell me what prompted you to come over so hastily.”

Shiro and Keith exchange glances, but Shiro sets down his bowl of rice and places the chopsticks on the ceramic rest.

“After the battle to end the Galra occupation, the leadership of the Garrison fractured. For reasons beyond our control, it became apparent that some expected that our team would readily fit back into the military jurisdiction permanently.”

“I don’t understand, were you not working under their command structure during the liberation?” Kazuko asks, clearly puzzled.

“Yes, but now that we’ve managed it,” Keith steps in, “We have to be able to focus on beyond just Earth. But if a handful of admirals are intent on controlling our every move, I don’t know if we can do what we need to.” And keep Shiro safe, he thinks to himself.

“So why here?”

“It was no longer safe for us to stay at the base. Not until we know more about how the power struggles among the leadership plays out.”

“To be honest,” Shiro adds in, “I don’t think they would believe that I would come back here. We had to make the decision very quickly and this seemed like the safest choice.”

<<Takashi, eventually your parents are going to find out,>> Kazuko says in frustration, slipping into Japanese. <<I told Testuro that I was going to be working out of Izu for a while and needed to use the house, but I can’t promise that my brother won’t tell the rest of the family if he finds out you are here.>>

“And what if my parents report us to the Garrison out of spite?” he shoots back, deliberately forcing the use of English for Keith’s sake.

“You should have thought of that before you showed up and brought me into this!” Kazuko snaps, her emotions finally getting the better of her. <<I do not understand what you expected!>>

<<The Galra didn’t just capture and imprison me. They experimented, tortured. And somehow through a totally implausible series of events, I escaped them, got drafted into saving the universe, avoided permanent death, finally get home again, and only then discover that now I have an unexpected ability to use alien technology that I shouldn’t,>> he blurts out. Kazuko wordlessly stares at him, shocked.

<<But it has critically hospitalized me twice now, and I didn’t give up almost everything that has ever been important to me just to let them force me into some twisted experiment against my will, just because there are those who are desperate to control it. Not after everything that I have gone through!>>

Shiro slams his human hand on the tatami mat with a thud out of frustration, and swears under his breath before turning to Keith. “She knows.”

“Ah shit.”

\---

Still seething with a foul mood, Shiro bullies Keith into letting him scan the log from the monitor. The last day hasn’t show any swings in blood sugars that can’t be explained by their irregular sleep and meals, and he peels the offending device from his skin, wincing as the tiny barbs release. He seals the casing around his shoulder in a waterproof cover that Hunk had given him after the surgery, and carefully lets himself sink into the hot bath water up to his chin.

He’s still reeling from the conversation with his cousin. She took off, saying that she needed space to think. Keith nearly followed her but Shiro told him to just let her go.

He’s out from the bath with his emotions back in check by the time she returns, tear tracks dried on her face, and he coaxes her into taking her turn soaking in the hot mineral water. ‘The springs around here,’ Kazuko’s father once told him a lifetime ago, ‘are known for their healing nature if you are patient enough to let them.’

He and Keith were scanning the news feeds for any indication that the Garrison had tracked them to Japan when she joins them in the room.

<<I’m sorry,>> she says formally.

“I apologize for not telling you everything from the start,” Shiro responds in English. Keith needs to be included in this.

“You had your reasons. I did not understand how grave the situation is.”

“We’ve barely had a couple weeks since the fight to liberate Earth,” Keith says wearily, “Commander Holt was genuinely spooked by how quickly things had changed. The Garrison was under civilian oversight until the invasion. With that gone, the occupation over, and Admiral Sanda dead, it has changed the power dynamic.”

“Our comrades have been detained. We know that in certain circumstances, the lions can be summoned and piloted remotely, but it’s not always consistent.”

“I can’t feel the black lion’s mind from here,” Keith shakes his head. “And a giant mechanical lion locked away in a hangar is going to get noticed if it breaks out and makes a beeline here.”

“We need to find out the status of the others. We’ve assumed because there has been no messages from either Sam or Pidge that they are detained, or being monitored at the very least. We don’t know if there are any of the Blades on planet, most followed Kolivan to re-establish bases elsewhere the last time I checked.”

“Pretty much,” Keith agreed.

“Without the hacking skills of one of the Holts, I don’t know if there is much we can do from here,” Shiro sighs.

Kazuko looks thoughtful. “I have an old classmate that is quite good. Did work for the defense ministry almost right out of high school for a few years before the invasion. When the government dissolved, I helped him find a position, and he still does favours for me periodically.”

“That sounds great!” Keith says, sounding relieved for the first time that day.

“There is a catch though. He works directly for Takashi’s parents."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laid down after work for what I thought was going to be a power nap and woke up a few hours later, whoopsie. But not posting much later than normal.
> 
> I tried tweaking this chapter a few times, but in the end having Shiro finally getting a bit sick of feeling like he has to justify himself all the time getting to him seemed to further the plot the best. Unfortunately for him it'll probably be a common theme.
> 
> But it could be worse, it could be Slav.
> 
> PS. Just in case it wasn't clear, Tetsuro, who Kazuko refers to occasionally is her brother.
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated as always.


	15. Chapter 15

<<Yuuji-kun, it’s Shirogane Kazuko calling.>>

<<Hey Kazu-chan. What’s up?>> the voice sounded loud in the room as she turned the phone to speaker mode.

<<I’ve had something come up, and it’s up your alley. Was hoping you might have some time to help me out in the next few days,>> Kazuko says smoothly. Keith is fiddling with the dictation feature on his translation app, but it’s having a hard time picking up the voice of this Yuuji guy.

<<I’m in the middle of a big project already, can it wait for a couple weeks?>> Keith gives up on the app and steps out of the room in the direction of the kitchen.

<<It’s more of a now or never thing. Where are you working out of these days?>>

<<The boss has our team moving a lot from site to site recently, but I’m at the plant near Shizuoka City.>> Shiro and Kazuko exchange glances, it’s reasonably close to Izu.

<<I’m in the hometown this week, but I can come take you for supper tonight,>> she offers. <<I think this can be a side project.>>

<<I’m curious what has you so persistent, but I can’t guarantee that I can take it on right now,>> Yuuji says, unaware that Shiro is listening in on the call. <<I just got my government security clearance back, and I’m swamped with reintegrating the computer network with the server for the contracts we got with the provisional government.>>

<<Can we meet at 7:30 tonight?>> she asks, calculating out travel time. <<I’ll send you an address.>>

<<Not that okonomiyaki place again. I’m so sick of it already but it’s the closest thing to the plant.>>

<<No, no. I’ll pick something else. Might be a station or two away. I’m not in the mood to bump into people from the company tonight.>>

<<Sounds good. Speaking of the company, the boss mentioned that his wife might be taking a trip overseas soon. To America.>>

Shiro gives a weird look. He’s assuming that Yuuji is referring to his mother.

<<Really? Last I heard she was tied up with getting all the business licences settled here. We don’t have capacity yet to begin rebuilding supply contacts out that way.>>

<<Surely you saw the news. Their son is confirmed alive.>>

<<Of course I saw that. But they haven’t spoken in years. When he disappeared, his father acted as though it didn’t concern him. Same thing when my brother brought it up to them a couple weeks ago.>>

<<I don’t feel like dwelling on it. They’ve always been a bit cold hearted, although they reward loyalty from their staff. Anyways, I need to go, see you tonight.>>

<<See you later,>> Kazuko replies before hanging up the call. Keith comes back into the room with a few snacks and the sound of the plastic crinkling breaks the silence hanging over the room.

“So?”

“We’re meeting with him tonight.”

Shiro hasn’t quite shaken a skeptical look on his face. “Can we trust him?”

“More than anyone else I know that could do what we need. Hacking into the Garrison network to see if your comrades are indeed being detained is difficult work.”

“I wonder why my mother is going to America,” Shiro muses.

“She’s what?” Keith’s head snaps up.

“Sorry, Yuuji said that he heard that she was planning a trip. So soon after the liberation of Earth, it doesn’t make any sense from a business standpoint.”

“She wouldn’t be going to try and see you, you don’t think?” Keith asks, puzzled.

“I can’t figure why else, although even without everything that has just happened, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Kazuko is looking up the train schedule on her phone, and speaks up: “We’ll need to leave in about half an hour.”

Shiro nods, “Sure. Uh Keith, we’d better cover up the worst of the scars.”

“Oh right,” Keith replies, and digs out the tube from the bag along with a mirror. He’s about to dab some of the makeup on his face using his fingers when Kazuko groans at them.

“No, not like that!” she mutters. “Oi, what on earth did you buy?”

The two of them shrug at her.

<<Idiot men,>> she complains as she goes to grab her purse.

\---

Shiro caught himself in a reflection at the train station an hour later. His cousin had admittedly done a better job of covering up their noticeable facial scars than their half-assed attempt before the flight over. Keith’s could still be seen slightly, but his skin tone was just enough off Shiro and Kazuko’s that it was a good attempt.

The trip to Shizuoka was fairly quick on the express train, Mount Fuji dominating the landscape as the sun set. Kazuko led them from the station to a small izakaya pub, and they were seated in a small room near the back, where she ordered some drinks.

Not even a few minutes later, they heard someone shuffling off their shoes. “Kazu-chan?” a male voice calls out. <<Sorry for keeping you waiting->> the man stalled as he noticed Shiro next to Kazuko.

She takes a deep breath. <<Yes, that’s who you think it is. Sit down.>>

\---

An hour later, and another sanitized and abbreviated summary of the events of the last few years explained, Shiro gives up ignoring the bottle of beer that Kazuko had ordered to share and pours himself a small glass, chugging half of it in a few sips and ignoring the aftertaste. This body has no tolerance to speak of, most likely, but he needs the moment to collect his thoughts.

Yuuji is sitting across from him, looking dazed. The request of him is not simple, and the shock of seeing Kazuko’s long missing second cousin suddenly still has him reeling.

<<Yuuji,>> Shiro starts, <<I need you to tell me right now if we can trust you to help us.>>

<<It’s not like you’ve left me much choice,>> Yuuji sighs, <<But you do know that your father is in the city right now, right? It’s going to be hard to keep him from knowing I’m helping you because I’m supposed to be working on this project that he’s personally overseeing until we can get the company systems reintegrated.>>

<<Tell us what you need,>> Kazuko says.

Yuuji makes a humming noise as he thinks. <<As a minimum, a separate computer and internet connection from the company network. There is too much risk if I use the work system, and I don’t have time to go get one of my personal systems where I have them hidden away.>>

<<Specs?>>

<<I’ll send them to you along with a discrete vendor I know in the area. Other than one chip it should be easy to get built by tomorrow. I’ll order the encryption chip separately and install it myself.>>

<<Anything else?>>

<<No. I did some side work during the occupation looking at how to re-establish communications with a Garrison base in China with the others after a key secure telecommunications line was cut in the Pacific. I identified a potential security gap in the system at the time, but left it as it didn’t affect the job. I will start there and see if it still exists once I get the computer.>>

Yuuji stretches with a yawn. <<I’m going to take off back to the company dorm. I have a feeling I’m not going to get much sleep in the next few days. But here,>> he types out some info and sends a message to what Shiro assumes is Kazuko’s account, <<Is an encrypted line. Use that if you need to reach me during the day. We monitor all incoming and outgoing communications going to devices in the company computer labs, but this won’t show up.>>

Kazuko quietly pays the tab and turns to Yuuji. <<We cannot thank you enough. I owe you a great debt.>>

<<I’ll talk with you tomorrow,>> he says as he shuffles into his shoes and leaves.

\---

A package shows up at the house by mid-afternoon. Kazuko accepts the box and carefully unwraps it. It looks like an unassuming laptop, but Shiro and Keith know that it’s filled with the most powerful chips you can buy without needing a specialized power supply. She slides it in a protective wrap and then into a briefcase.

She booked a room at a business hotel on the other side of Shizuoka from where they had met Yuuji before, and they make their way down there again. This time, the stares of random people feels more palpable, and Shiro turns in his seat on the train to make his arm seem less noticeable, although the dye is now more of a grey stain on his hair than anything else.

Yuuji shows up around 8pm, and between mouthfuls of convenience store zaru soba, he sets up the laptop, installing the special encryption chip he had bought. He connects the laptop to the power supply in the hotel room and a special internet receiver before he runs a number of baseline tests.

Keith lounges on the bed, staring out the window. Like Shiro, he’s been feeling anxious all day, but shrugs it off whenever Kazuko asks him about it.

<<I think we are good to go,>> Yuuji says, booting up a connection to a programming hub. Keith shifts off the bed and joins Shiro in looking over Yuuji’s shoulder.

Keith, from too much experience seeing Pidge do her stuff, knows that most of this is not as dramatic in person as it can feel in the heat of a battle. Yuuji types away, trying this and that, careful not to trigger any monitoring. About a couple hours in, he announces that he’s gotten through the primary and secondary firewalls. It’s just a matter of finding what they are looking for.

Eventually he’s able to tap into security operations for the Garrison. There is no unusual activity in the brigs, but there is an engineering lab building under higher than normal surveillance. The notes for the guards on shift don’t really speak to the reasons, only that it was protective security. There does not appear to be cameras inside, only over every window and external door.

Yuuji is able to pull up some of the last day’s feed over one window. For most of the day, the blinds over the windows stayed closed, obscuring the view inside. But for a brief moment, almost missed, a section was pushed aside just long enough for them to see a person looking out the window: Lance, with a concerned look on his face.

Yuuji tries to pull the long term data from other cameras for the building, but an alarm is triggered and he hastily cuts the connection and immediately grabs the internet receiver to set it for an emergency scramble. <<Shit!>>

Keith begins to stuff their things into a bag while Yuuji, Kazuko, and Shiro hastily wrap up cords and equipment. They’ve bailed out of the hotel within minutes, and it’s only when they’ve made it back to the house in Izu that Shiro feels like he can breathe properly again.

Yuuji sets up to try and cover their tracks, systematically altering security feeds that captured their images on the way home on the train. It’s not until well in the night that he feels satisfied. He sends off a message to work, saying he ended up pulling an all nighter when inspiration hit for the project he was working on, and the group tries to relax into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized this was going to be a bit short so I've played with chapter lengths for the next few coming up. I figure that some degree of suspense though keeps you all coming back though.
> 
> Comments and kudos always appreciated.


	16. Chapter 16

In hindsight, Shiro realizes, they shouldn’t have come back to the house. Barely a few hours after he drifts off into a light and restless sleep, someone pounds on the door. Kazuko hastily answers it, and Shiro hears her scream before her voice is muted abruptly.

Soldiers spill into the house, dirt muddying the tatami mats. He barely has time to reactivate his arm before someone shoots him with a tranquilizing bolt, and he crashes to the floor. He hears Keith drop behind him, and Shiro fights back a yell of frustration as the sedatives take hold.

\---

He wakes up to total darkness, head pounding. Fumbling, he can’t feel his prosthetic arm, but reaching out with his good hand, he feels around. He’s in a small holding cell, maybe one by two metres big. The room hums in a weird way that seems to be unique to Earth airplanes. He’s being transported somewhere.

A red light flicks on above his head, and moment later he hears a hissing sound. Gas. There is nowhere to hide from it, and he tries not to let himself panic as he passes out again moments later.

\---

Keith comes to awareness with a splitting headache. The world feels like he’s underwater, voices muffled and distorted until they start to come into focus. He’s content to keep his eyes shut, the light outside nauseating.

“You idiots,” a voice comes through, clearer than anything else so far. “You kept dosing them to the point that it’s amazing that they didn’t have an adverse reaction.” The voice sounds vaguely familiar, but Keith can’t place why.

“Shirogane kept waking up too quickly. No matter, they have him on IV sedation now while they run more scans.”

“When I said that we needed to do more testing, this was not what I intended. And I also advised against continuing to sedate him after what your team did to him on the transport back here.” Keith strained to catch the conversation. Was it the doctor from the flight test?

“We did not expect Holt and his brat to interfere after the second test. Shirogane shouldn’t have been released from the medical centre while we were still making decisions on how to proceed.”

“He was physically fine, just needed monitoring. I hope you do realize that my duty is to my patients first, and then to the Garrison.” Yes, Keith thought. It was definitely the flight surgeon.

“Not when they are a risk to us all. We counted on you to do what we needed of you to learn what was keeping Shirogane from being able to fully control the Atlas.”

“I’ve been through this, all the data points to a metabolic issue. We never did find out exactly how Altean tech is powered, but it seems to rely on its user’s energy levels to supplement what can be provided through their other power sources. If they can’t maintain that, well, there are issues. Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, I need to go do my rounds. You and the admiral practically dumped four oversedated, unconscious bodies that hadn’t been given water or food for hours on my team.”

“Very well doctor, but the admiral expects you to be looking at the scan data once they have finished with Shirogane.”

“When I have finished with all my patients.”

Footsteps came closer, and Keith felt the covers on the bed shift. His wrists were tied to the hospital bed, but someone checks the circulation, and the touch of cool hands making contact with his skin makes him shift his fingers unintentionally in response. “How’s your head?” the doctor asks, and Keith reluctantly cracks open his eyes. The bed shifts upright a touch, but the taste of cool water through a straw is a welcome relief.

“Like falling to the Earth all over again,” he eventually replies.

“I’ve turned down the lights but I need to check your pupil responses,” the doctor says, resting a couple fingers on Keith’s chin. Keith squints away from the pen light, but the doctor seems satisfied and pushes a medication into his IV line. It takes a moment, but the pounding in his head fades enough that the nausea calms.

“Where’s Shiro?” he asks. “And the others?”

“The two that were taken in with you and Commander Shirogane will be fine. They got a bit roughed up on the way here but they should be fine. I’ll check on them shortly. They are taking the commander through more extensive scans. We found some discrepancies after the second flight test but we didn’t have enough detail to be sure.”

Keith tries to squint at the ID badge hanging off the doctor’s belt loop. “You were the one who came when Shiro collapsed the second time on the Atlas,” he asks, seeking confirmation. The doctor nods.

“That’s right. I’m Doctor Forrester. Look, I need to step out and work on my rounds, but,” Forrester drops his voice low, “I don’t agree with the shift in priorities from the admiralty. I don’t think I can get you or the others out on my own, but I’m determined not to let the commander get physically hurt by any testing we end up forced to do.”

“It might not be the physical scars that we need to worry about,” Keith says cryptically, sleepy again now that the pounding in his head had receded.

The doctor’s phone gives off a notification. He pulls out the device and skims the text.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be back when I can.”

\---

Lance was getting really, really tired of being cooped up in the small apartment where he had been effectively detained. Okay, yes, it was bigger than the room they assigned him when they arrived on Earth, with a separate bedroom away from a compact but usable living area with a kitchenette. But other than a couple news feeds and access to a general library that he could download to a tablet, his only contact with the outside world was when he placed requests for food (and a video game system) that was delivered through the parcel pass-through.

He assumed the other paladins were in the same boat. Maybe a few hours after Keith spirited Shiro off to the house in the desert, the rest of them began to be rounded up. Hunk was the first to quietly disappear, then Allura and Coran, eventually the Holts (minus Matt who had gone back up to a rebel ship almost immediately), and him. Krolia, to the best of his knowledge, was out of contact until further notice, while only left his sister Veronica, Romelle, and Pidge’s mom unaccounted for from what he personally knew.

The Paladins had come together in that frantic night, memorizing a common story. That all they knew was that Shiro and Keith both got leave passes, and had taken off somewhere quiet to give Shiro time to recuperate.

Lance could only trust that the Garrison had no reason to believe that anyone from, except Commander Holt, Allura, and Coran, had any reason to know about the spat between the admirals that happened late in the evening after the second flight test of the Atlas. When he was interviewed, they made no mention of it, before locking him into this room.

He never could find any security cameras inside the suite, although there was one aimed at the window looking out over the airstrip. He kept the drapes pulled shut most of the time, preferring to maintain what privacy they had allotted him.

It had been days now, and the lack of contact with others was badly getting to him. He tried to keep his mind busy with the video games they gave him and reading some recently published books on the early days of the Galra occupation, but he was antsy.

Saving his progress in the game, he went into the bedroom to change. There was a few small free weights and an exercise band, and although he wished there was a more effective way for some cardio, stretching out his muscles felt good after a morning spent on the couch.

“Come on Keith, you can come break us out anytime now,” he said out loud to himself.

“Anytime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a bunch of editing last night and have been preloading the next few chapters as drafts into Ao3 as I head out of town for a family event this weekend starting tomorrow. Should make it easy to post even if I don't have much time otherwise. I'll have my Bluetooth keyboard for my tablet with me on an off chance there is some down time that's not just in a car, but this way at the very least I should be good until early next week before the posting frequency may slow down.
> 
> This chapter was a bit messed up as I played with the length of the last two and into tomorrow's. I now notice that some transitions are a bit jarring.
> 
> And god help me, I think this may wind up novel length by the end.


	17. Chapter 17

Colleen Holt wondered some days when the Garrison would stop treating her as though she was an idiot. Her husband had left her a cryptic message the night after a flight test, and by the next day had stopped responding to messages from her. Katie had as well.

She gave it another day before digging out the encrypted receiver that her son Matt had given them, and sent a message to him where he was presumably up on the ship that had brought him back to Earth.

He sent back a single word reply, a codeword that they had established between the four of them in the last few weeks to mean that at least one member of the family was in danger but that everyone else was to remain vigilant.

And so she was. She realized that the young Altean woman that Katie mentioned had been found not long before their journey back to Earth began (although because of the time slippage it was over three Earth years ago) was effectively the only one that had not gone missing. So she did what she could, and invited Romelle to come over for a few days “to experience Earth home life” and so that Colleen could keep an eye on her.

The space dog, wolf, thing that Keith had acquired showed up one day unannounced, clinging to Romelle at first, but got along surprisingly well with her own pet dog. Colleen only wished that it didn’t eat quite as much.

As the period where her husband, daughter, and the whole Voltron team had disappeared without word grew from a couple days to nearly a week, she knew that something dire had happened. And she was not surprised when Veronica, the older sister of Katie’s teammate Lance who was also working with her husband, approached her quietly one evening at her home with the same concerns. So under the guise of a ladies day, the three of them took off to a nearby city, taking advantage of the rebuilt facilities for a hopefully quiet and more importantly, unmonitored evening.

Colleen had quickly discovered that when you looked past the awe struck and naive facade, that Romelle was an articulate, observant, and intelligent young woman who was doing surprisingly well, all things concerned. Veronica has apparently taken her and Allura out for some shopping using a slush fund that her husband had only described as being from “the energy bill savings for the next month alone from not running a particle barrier.”

So when she drove Romelle into the city from the Garrison housing complex, she was dressed not unlike what you would expect from a women in her early 20s, a nice sun dress and sandals, and a fashionable hat hiding the tips of her ears. Someone had also helped her hide the blue Altean marks on her cheekbones, and she looked like a university student, not an alien.

Romelle had a quirky tolerance for spicy food, Mexican was apparently no good, but Thai was fine. Veronica had said that anything other than Garrison mess fare sounded amazing, so they took up the back booth of a place that was being applauded for getting its supply chain back up and running so quickly.

They let their food come to them before the conversation turned to the matter that had been in all three of their minds.

“Dios, Lance had been missing for years and now that he's been out of contact for a week our mother has been inconsolable. At the least I need to find his scrawny ass before my mother drives me insane,” Veronica sighs dramatically.

“What did they ask when they pulled you in?” Colleen inquires.

“I honestly just thought at the time that it was a follow up to the debriefing after the second test. I had no idea at the time that Keith and Shiro had already left the Garrison by then.”

“Sam woke me at 4am that night with a message, but I don’t know how to reach out to Shiro unless my son has a way. I assume that Matt has been monitoring the situation but trying to avoid doing anything that might draw more attention to them,” Colleen theorizes.

“I am still very confused why the Garrison, after all this, is so determined to control Voltron and the paladins as though they own it. Do they not understand that there is more to this universe than just the Earth?” Romelle vents between mouthfuls of pad thai.

“If we had to condense Earth history to a single theme, is that those with power do not like what they cannot control,” Veronica says somberly.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Colleen agrees.

“So we know that those two are in hiding, but what about the others?” Veronica wonders out loud.

“I suspect that they were detained by the Garrison. Sam and Katie would not have gone into hiding without giving me some hint. Not after everything we’ve gone through.”

“Surely they wouldn’t have kept them right here, it’s almost too obvious,” Romelle says.

“I think they counted on people assuming that, although I have to say that I don’t know where they may have taken them,” Veronica sighs. “After years of basically being trapped at the base I don’t know where they could have been kept without someone knowing.”

The three of them discuss it further, and ultimately it’s been mostly left to Veronica, as the only one who has legitimate reasons to be spending most of her time in secure areas at the Garrison, to continue investigating for any area that had recently been put under higher security than would be expected.

Colleen took Romelle back to the house, and pulled out the secure communicator from its hiding place as Romelle settled down for the night. For the first time in a week there was a message from Matt:

<<We have intelligence that Shiro and Keith have been taken in by the Garrison and are en route to the main base.>>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family road trip edition 1/4:  
> A.K.A. where I got half of my quirky knowledge of medical shit from.
> 
> Dad (suffering from epic brain freeze because he consumed an iced cappuccino too quickly): "I, uh, ow, think my meninges just contracted."
> 
> Me: "Is that even possible? You just over stimulated nerve endings in your soft palate. Try pressing your tongue behind the alveolar ridge and the sensation might disappate."
> 
> Mom: "WTF is wrong with both of you and how am I related?"


	18. Chapter 18

Shiro woke up on a bed tucked into the corner of a small Garrison cell. Aside from a feeling that his mouth was fuzzy and a slight headache, he felt surprisingly okay. But they hadn’t returned the prosthetic arm, although that wasn’t so surprising. They had left a couple toiletries at the small sink, and brushing his teeth already made him feel much better.

Maybe an hour later, armed guards came in to haul him to a small room with a table and two chairs. The concrete floor was cold on his bare feet, and he wishes they had given him a sweater of some type.

So they wanted to play old school interrogation. Leave him feeling on edge and slightly uncomfortable. He was willing to wait it out, and sat there with a look of nonchalance.

A stocky man who appeared to be Chinese eventually came into the room. He was dressed in a business suit instead of a Garrison uniform, but there was no mistaking his military background.

“Commander Shirogane,” he said, sure enough with a noticeable Chinese accent, “I hope… you have an explanation… for taking yourself and another paladin… away without leave.” Shiro squinted slightly. The odd pauses as the other man spoke were bizarre at best.

“I was given a leave pass,” Shiro replied neutrally.

“One… that was produced… fraudulently.” Okay, this was already getting old, Shiro practically groans at the dramatic pauses.

“Oh, well I wasn’t aware. To be honest, I was glad for a chance to go relax somewhere off base for a week or two. Until I was practically kidnapped from my distant cousin’s house and dumped here. Wherever here is.”

“I see... that your reputation... as being occasionally obstinate... is still true.”

“I wasn’t aware that I had that sort of reputation, sir.”

“My old colleague Admiral Sanda…. once mentioned... before your disappearance… that you were… especially adamant… about being allowed on the…. Kerberos mission in spite of your… malady.”

It suddenly clicked for Shiro. This was the somewhat infamous Admiral Cheung who had long commanded the base in China. Was said to have overcompensated for a childhood stutter with stilted, overly dramatic speech. To the best of his knowledge, he had never actually met the man before.

“It seems to have limited itself to my arm. Granted my arm has been gone for a long time now.”

“Ah yes… the arm. Remarkable… technology the current… one is made from,” Cheung hummed. “I allowed… the engineers an opportunity… to examine it more carefully. I hope… you do not mind. You have no need… for it while we talk.”

The room is purposefully blank. Shiro had assumed that when they got transported by plane it was back to the base in the desert near New Mexico, but with nothing to go on, he could very well have wound up at the base in China.

Even when he was a cadet, the Chinese base rarely participated in personnel exchanges. It was known for being insular in its approach to training people, and while many of their top personnel did wonders for defense projects, very few even applied for research driven missions.

But it didn’t make much sense to have dragged him in the other direction. The base in North America was still where the lions were being kept, and all the in house expertise for the Atlas was centred.

“I honestly am not sure what you are expecting me to say, sir,” Shiro says with some sincerity. The man is hard to read, and although Shiro can guess at his intentions, he is far from certain.

“Your team has said… many times that you… have led them so far,” Cheung says, “We simply ask of you… and your team… that you will do… what is needed of you.”

“I would argue sir, that we’ve been doing that all along.”

“Yet you defied Sanda… and followed… your own agenda.”

Shiro sees where this is going and it’s all so frustrating. “Sir, there is a lot more to the universe than the Earth.”

“Not… while we are at… our most vulnerable,” Cheung says with a hint of anger.

“Voltron does not belong to you. Heck, technically none of the current paladins are commissioned officers. We have worked with the Galaxy Garrison structure since we arrived, but those five have a bigger duty than just to Earth.”

“You and Holt… have both said that you… need the Atlas. If you need it… then Earth must come first… in exchange.”

“Sir, with the Galra empire now in shambles, the security of Earth is just one small part of this. You cannot look at this in isolation. Eventually someone will decide that it is time to take over again. Instead, we want to equip the coalition we had been building to govern itself independently. That gives the Earth security for thousands of years potentially, not just the next few.”

“Shirogane,” Cheung says his name slowly, “It is of no concern to me... what worlds beyond our own do. The rest of the Garrison... was short sighted and... incurred risks. If they had not sent you... and the Holts to Kerberos... we should have never... suffered the invasion.”

“There is no way we could know if that is true or not. The blue lion was hidden on Earth. Eventually the Galra would have come.”

“I disagree,” Cheung raises his voice. “No matter, I control… the admiralty now. We will correct… these wrongs. But first… we need to find a way… to control the Atlas… with your cooperation… or not.”

\---

Veronica was surprised that the flight that came in from Asia was not classified secret enough to keep her from the records. Colleen Holt had immediately called her, and she raced back to the Garrison in spite of the late hours and holed herself into her office. Admiral Cheung, from the base in China had arrived. While there was no records per se of the cargo that was brought in, it went to standard high security storage and then failed to get recorded in the base manifests.

She had security access to the area, as it contained spares for the Atlas, so she signed into the area claiming that she figured out how to fix a minor issue that had been identified in the last flight test and was going to use a spare to confirm before she did it to the real thing. Tucked into a corner was four oddly shaped crates, connected to a power supply for recharge.

Her heart sunk and she fought back a moment of nausea as it became apparent what it was. Prisoner transport.

She quickly left the storage area before anyone could make note of her presence.

\----

The guards, who all had their faces covered and never spoke a word to him, tossed Shiro back into his small cell, leaving the light dimmed. The small table had a number of meals worth of food piled on to a tray.

Sure enough, they left him in there for at least a day, if not two, without so much as a sound from outside. Cheung seemed determined to break him, but he tries to relax as best he can, expecting it to be for the long haul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family road trip edition 2/4  
> Stubbornness doesn't run in my family. Nope. Not at all.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: this chapter is fairly full of medical whump.

It does not terribly surprise him when the door opens suddenly, and a couple guards yank him out of the cell without so much as a word. A dark hood is tossed over his head (“Nice touch guys, really.”) and he winces a bit at how stiff he feels after just a couple days.

They dump him into a shower room that looks suspiciously like the one in the base hospital that they use for patients to clean up before procedures, and the slightly medicinal smell of the soap confirms it. He’s glad enough to get clean to not complain, and although it takes a while to rinse out the shampoo from his hair one handed, he is soon clutching a towel around his waist.

The hallways of the hospital are suspiciously clear in this ward, but he lets the guard simply lead him into a small procedure room rather than getting dragged there. He is perhaps a little shocked to see Dr. Forrester, the flight surgeon laying out things on a tray. It’s the first confirmation that Shiro was indeed dragged back to the base and was not in China.

“Shiro, please, take a seat,” Forrester says, pointing at the padded chair in the room. He walks up to the guards and tells them to get out and as the door clicks shut, and sighs at Shiro, tossing him a cotton patient gown. The privacy is slightly unnerving. “I’m sorry that it took some time to get you out of the cell.”

It’s all so surreal, Shiro thinks. “I don’t know what to say. But I assume there is a reason.”

The doctor gives out a long sigh. “They have ordered us to do more testing to see how the connection that you have with the Atlas works. It took us a couple days to come up with a plan that we feel is going to be the least invasive that the admiral would accept.”

Shiro narrowly avoids rolling his eyes, but accepts the doctor’s help with the ties on the gown. At least he feels less exposed.

“I want you to understand right now so it is perfectly clear, I am not willing to do anything that will purposefully hurt you. It may not be comfortable at times, but you should be fine physically.”

“What kind of testing have they ordered?”

“We know what your basic vitals have been before, during, and after making connection to Atlas, but it hasn’t included monitoring your brain activity, and we could use more detailed data on your metabolic rate during the whole process. To be honest, we probably needed this data anyways.”

Shiro looks at the doctor with a neutral expression. “Right. I remember you saying this before the second test. But connecting with Atlas was just supposed to be a bonus if we got through testing the primary ship systems that day.”

“Which was why my colleagues and I agreed not to do some of this testing then,” Forrester takes a deep breath. “But now it has been ordered.”

“What happened to the others?”

“Detained, but safe. I’m sorry, I don’t know much more than that, although I was able to speak to Keith shortly before they took him to where they were going to keep him. They are starting to compartmentalize information.”

“So what is the plan for the testing?”

“Ultimately, they want to take the Atlas back up to high orbit and have you try to connect again. We have a specialized flight suit that has additional monitors, ports for IV lines and the such, easier access to your lower arm in case we have to push emergency medications, and a helmet with integrated EEG capability and breathing gas monitoring,” Forrester rattles off a list of features.

“I can’t guarantee it will be particularly comfortable though, especially after they ordered a dual harness connection to keep you strapped into the chair. Oh yes, I guess in a way they did take your advice for a chair.”

“What about my prosthetic? I haven’t seen it since they grabbed me in Japan.”

“I don’t know, unfortunately. They probably feel that you will use it to escape again.”

“I am surprised there isn’t any guards in here.”

“Shiro,” Forrester turns to him with real concern in his voice. “I know that you likely suffer from post traumatic stress in these types of situations. I have done everything I can to try and ensure that this is the least hurtful to you as possible. My training tells me how to safeguard it physically, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try my hardest to do it for your mental health as well.”

Shiro is speechless, but lets Forrester take his hand to adhere the first of the bio sensors over one of his fingers. Best to get this over with with a little bit of control over the situation rather than get forced.

“Thank you, I guess.”

There is a rather large number of things to do, and Shiro nearly balks at some of it. Two IV ports, a damned catheter again (“This will take time, and they aren’t exactly keen on letting you into a bathroom on your own to peel half way out of the suit to pee halfway through”) and enough little bio sensors that he feels spotted as he is helped into the compression undersuit. The doctor starts to adhere tiny EEG electrodes to his scalp before he shoves his feet into the boots of the suit. Forrester feeds his fluid lines through the umbilical connection at the back and the body of the suit is zipped shut. The internal bracing feels stiff along his torso, but he can breathe fully.

He’s led through the nearly abandoned hospital ward directly to a transport, and without letting go of his left wrist, the guards take him to the main hangar complex and almost immediately straight onto the ship. There is the odd face on the Atlas that he recognizes, but more noticeable is those missing: Sam Holt, Iverson, and even Lance’s sister Veronica.

At the bridge is a new chair at the central console. There is an odd harness connection on the back rest, but it lines up with the corresponding ones between his shoulder blades and another at the small of his back. He hears them clip into place, but he’s left sitting slightly raised from the seat base, only his lower thighs touching. He was a tall guy, but it was as though they had slightly miscalculated the placement.

“I don’t think I am fully clipped into the harness point,” he protests, but only manages a slight jerking motion downwards that winds up being futile. The lower connection point has him arching his back awkwardly and it’s only the integrated harness in the flight suit that is keeping him from feeling strained.

A scientist that Shiro didn’t recognize just grunted “It’s too late to adjust it now” and handed Forrester the helmet now that the main umbilical was connected to the equipment secured behind the chair.

There was an integrated facemask within the helmet that presses on his cheekbones awkwardly, and the EEG electrodes were certainly noticeable where the helmet padding pressed onto his head snugly.

“Can someone give the helmet a little wiggle?” he asks, voice sounding odd and muffled. Forrester gives it a bit of an adjustment and the seal over the bridge of his nose sits more comfortably. There is a click as they actually connect the helmet to a supply cable, and the speakers near his ears crackle for a split second and noise cancelling suddenly shuts out all the noise around him aside from the sound of his own breathing.

“Hey!” he protests. “No one said anything about this!”

“We need you… to be able to focus… on your task at hand,” Cheung’s voice comes over the comm. Shiro can’t see him on the bridge from his awkward vantage point. The admiral doesn’t bother to elaborate further, and Shiro is kept in the odd enforced silence as the crew around him bring the Atlas to full power and take her up to orbit.

For reasons that are beyond him, he’s effectively ignored for the better part of a few hours and his stomach grumbles a little. He assumes that Forrester has been pumping him full of nutrients through the higher of the two IV lines. The other one is capped off but still noticeable if he flexes his hand.

His mind unintentionally wanders, and he alternates between unsuccessful attempts to recognize the unfamiliar faces manning each of the stations within his view, and carefully trying to get into that semi-meditative zone that allowed him to connect to the Atlas the last time.

As it moves on into hours, he realizes that he’s on his own to try and get the connection to work. He tries to shake out the slightly cramped feeling in his legs from the horrible harness, and attempts to relax. He doesn’t really feel like giving Cheung the satisfaction of knowing how to control the special functions of the Atlas, but he knows Cheung is willing to wait him out.

But as it stretches into 6, then 8 hours into testing, Shiro has all but given up. He’s trying so hard now, but there is none of that hum of Atlas’s presence that he now recognizes as missing. He can’t figure out what is so different this time around. Until it comes to him, so obvious in hindsight.

The prosthetic. Something about it is the catalyst that allows him to make that connection with the Atlas.

But Cheung has it, somewhere.

\---

A few hours more go by, and he’s let himself doze off for a while, a slight smirk hidden under the mask obscuring his expression under the faceplate of the helmet. This is something he has to keep to himself, to protect everyone around him. Keith, the others, even Dr. Forrester.

They eventually manhandle him off the connection points on the seat, and when the noise cancelling cuts off suddenly, the bustle of everyone around him in combination with the aching in his legs is almost over stimulating.

They haul him back to the hospital where a tired looking Dr Forrester and an assistant help him out of the suit, and he is glad to be rid of the uncomfortable IV lines and catheter. He’s given soft scrubs and a hooded sweatshirt to wear, and he’s taken to a room on the top level of a lab complex where they had set up a small suite. The room is oddly domestic, and feels stark in its contrast to the cell where he had been detained before. Forrester checks over him one last time from the privacy of the room.

“There are no bugs in here, only security outside. But be guarded,” Forrester says softly. “I have to get going to debrief.”

“I couldn’t get it to work,” Shiro confesses.

“I know. We learned a little, but not much.”

“What did you learn?” Shiro asks, curious.

“How much oxygen a tall Asian male with only one arm consumes while in Stage 1 and 2 non-REM sleep,” the doctor says with a small smile, before stepping out of the room, the door sliding shut with a loud click as it locks from the outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family road trip edition 3/4  
> Where I am still geeking out about old warplanes with working engines.
> 
> Favourite conversation of the last 24 hours, about a guy leading the restoration of the one engine:   
> "I am pretty sure the lead engineer would make love to the [engine] parts if he could."  
> "Now, now, the museum has no place in the bedrooms of the nation."


	20. Chapter 20

Veronica hears about the third Atlas test too late. She races to the hangar, desperate to get on board in time but the ship has just launched as she arrives.

She realizes that she only has hours to figure out how to monitor the security feeds that will eventually track everyone who leaves the ship when it arrives back. From her office, she makes a list of ones to check first. Those monitoring routes going to the security complex where the brig is located, the other hangars, and lastly the hospital complex. If the Atlas does transform for a third time, there is a real risk that Shiro will be hauled there in critical condition again.

She’s dozing on a cot behind her desk when a notification comes up on her computer. The Atlas was coming back to dock. She has just enough time to use the washroom down the hall and pour a tepid cup of coffee from the machine in the lunchroom. It tastes like sludge but is probably 90% caffeine by this time so it does the trick.

It takes about half an hour, but she finally spots a group of guards leading Shiro off the ship. The flight surgeon is not far behind him. Admiral Cheung is spotted some ways back, but she focuses on Shiro for now. He’s obviously in better shape than the last two times, but his expression reads as uncomfortable as they shove him into a waiting transport.

She’s able to follow it, and it takes him to the hospital complex. It’s nearly midnight, but he re-emerges only about 45 min later, again followed by the doctor. She records the transport’s plate number, although it probably won’t be used again, but allows the system to track it to a nearby lab complex.

The flight surgeon has left for the command building shortly, but the guards make no appearance from any of the main exits. By 4am, the transport hasn’t moved, and she assumes Shiro was taken somewhere there.

She has security clearance for part of the facility, but there are some labs on the upper floors that are more restricted and their camera feeds are not accessible through the main system. It should, in theory, be mainly engineering labs, but she hasn’t had a reason to be up there herself in years, before the invasion.

Well, she thinks, it’s a better start than any.

\---

Cosmo, the space wolf, has been acting particularly strange as of late, Romelle decides. It’s been tailing her incessantly, whining periodically. She can’t think why unless something has happened to Keith.

When Cosmo turned up next to her in the first place, it was probably the longest “jump” that the wolf had been known to make so far, well over a hundred of the Earth kilometres away. She’s asked the beast a few times if it knew where Keith was, and it always gave a wary but blank look which she interpreted as a ‘no’.

So when she shuffles over on the couch, and Cosmo nestles beside her, she doesn’t think much as she asks “What’s up? Have you found Keith for us yet?” Cosmo’s ears immediately perk up, and she almost sheds her skin in a startled yelp as the wolf suddenly pops out of existence.

“Ah, no!” she cries.

\---

Keith had been sleeping in slightly when his damned space wolf pops into existence above him, landing on his chest in a heavy lump. Winded, he shoves Cosmo off and is about to chide his pet when he suddenly stops.

“Shit, Cosmo, stop doing that to me. Wait, you’re here. Jeez, don’t get me wrong buddy, but I’ve been here for a couple days now. Took you long enough.” Cosmo just gives him a blank stare in return.

He wiggles out from where Cosmo is still sitting on (crushing) his legs, and gets dressed as fully as he can with what they had left for him in this tiny apartment he was detained in. Uniforms might have been less conspicuous, but if Cosmo was able to make a leap to here from where he had left the space wolf with Romelle, there was a chance that he could hitch a leap off the base, where he could start to arrange for help.

There was probably only a relatively small window of opportunity to act. There may not be any cameras per se, but he is sure that they have some sort of monitoring set up within the apartment. Probably infrared or something.

He really doesn’t have any belongings to speak of with him that he needs to collect, so he crouches next to Cosmo and pulls the wolf into a hug. “Take me somewhere safe, far from here,” he says, and the weird jerking sensation that seems to originate from his navel pulls him away from his makeshift prison.

To the Holt’s kitchen. Where Colleen lets out a startled scream and drops a hot pan with eggs on the floor.

It could be worse.

\---

Colleen has downed a rather strong and hurriedly made cocktail at the kitchen table, still waiting for her heart rate to stop beating frantically. She lets out a breath sharply, and finally turns to him and says “Okay, so I was not expecting that.”

“To be fair, neither was I,” he replies. Cosmo is clinging to his legs and Romelle is hastily making toast at the kitchen island. “I’ve been holed up in that room for about three days. No idea where the others are, or the two people with us when they ambushed Shiro and I.” The two women give him a puzzled look. “Uh, one of Shiro’s distant cousins and a friend of hers that was trying to help us.”

“In Japan?” Colleen asks. She’s known Shiro long enough to know about his strained family ties.

“Yeah. Look, I have no idea how long we have before they notice I’m gone. I think we are at a point where we need to grab Pidge, er, Katie and the other paladins using Cosmo now and then figure out what our next steps are.”

“Agreed. I need to contact Veronica,” Colleen moves upstairs, presumably where the secure link has been hidden.

“Okay Cosmo, I need you to listen up,” he says to the wolf, whose ears perk up. “I need you to grab as many of the others, starting with the other paladins. Lance, Allura, Pidge, and Hunk. Bring them here. Now!” Cosmo blinks out, and it’s a stressful couple minutes before Lance is deposited inelegantly on the couch with a yelp and Cosmo blinks out again.

It shouldn’t have been so simple, but one by one each of the current paladins is teleported into the house. Hunk has just arrived when Colleen comes tearing down the stairs. “I’ve messaged Veronica, but we probably only have moments before they trigger an alarm.”

“Come on Cosmo, at least one more, grab Shiro for me.” Cosmo looks like he’s about to blink out again, but hesitates at the last moment, turning to Keith with a whine.

“What’s wrong? You can’t feel him?” Cosmo continues to look confused.

“Uh, guys?” Hunk speaks up, still looking dazed. “What the hell just happened?”

\---

“Sir, we’re not picking anything up on motion sensors in block 7. It’s still a bit early, but normally we still get a reading from him when he sleeps. There was a spike about 15 minutes ago but now there is nothing.”

“All their sleep patterns are messed up, maybe he went back to bed.”

“Nah, this is too unusual. After the guy they just put into block 10, he’s the most restless sleeper.”

“I told them when they made us set up the security for these makeshift detention blocks that motion sensors are inherently fussy. Better to use in combo with infrared.”

“We really didn’t have time for it, it was a scramble to install what we did plus remove the lock controls from inside the units.”

“I guess that’s true. Give it a couple minutes, who knows.”

The security tech turns around to grab the glass of water from where it sits behind him, and takes a long sip.

Another alert pops up for block 3, a sudden spike in movement and then no reading for a couple minutes. Block 1 follows, then 4. By the time block 2 triggers an alert, he had already jammed his hand over the alert button, initiating the fail safe they installed that would pump all the units with an odourless sedative gas.

Blocks 5 and 6 registered as still having occupants, as was blocks 8 and 9. Block 10, which had only just been filled the night before also still had a person in there after what had evidently been a night filled with insomnia.

The tech turns to his supervisor, scrambling to look at the video feeds over the doors and windows. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They see guards wearing respirators entering the suites, but all come out with no one. The occupants are still in the four blocks, but the ones that held the paladins were empty, all in the span of about 15 minutes.

It was the cleanest, and most sudden jailbreak he had ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family road trip edition 4/4  
> Got home a few hours ago but then went down for a long nap. I have a pile of books I bought this weekend to eventually get through but I am going to try and get the next few chapters of this in better shape, although I'm not sure if there will be an update tomorrow because I realized that I need to resolve a plot issue so at least one section needs to be rewritten.
> 
> Edit: Sorry, there was a couple minor things I had to tweak in this one after I posted as per reasons above. It is just minor details though.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About 2/3 whump. Fair warning.

Veronica frantically pulls up the outdoor camera feeds for the lab complex when she gets the message from Colleen. Sure enough, a swarm of extra personnel are arriving and filing into the building. She’s barely got time to set up automated monitoring of the lab building and the hangar when she gets a message telling her that paladins including her brother had been found and retrieved.

At the Holt house, everyone has gathered in the living room, the other teens all dressed in nondescript home wear that speaks volumes to how quickly they were detained, and then eventually rescued.

Pidge has already commandeered her mother’s laptop, and is typing away at something. “We need to get the lions, but we need to get a hold of our armour and bayards first. They should have been stored in the secure armoury, but who knows if it’s been moved.”

“What about Matt Holt?” Hunk asks, pacing a little from the back corner.

“I sent him a message,” Colleen says, “But there isn’t much he can do without further alerting the Garrison.”

Pidge has finished creating a secure voice link and Veronica is linked into their conversation from her office at the base. “As best I can figure out, you were all kept on a secure floor in Lab Complex E-7,” she says. “But they were already bringing in more guards just a few minutes ago.”

“Any idea about where our bayards and armour?” Lance asks his sister.

“No. Look, I'm going to make my way over-”

“No,” Keith interrupts. “If you can stay safe, stay on the base.” Lance makes a sound of protest in the background but Keith continues speaking. “Your location is too strategic. Besides, we can use you as a beacon of sorts to bring someone in via Cosmo. But it only works if he can sense someone he knows and for now, you’re it.”

“Understood. I'll continue to look for signs of extra security building where the bayards might be stored.”

“We already tried to retrieve Shiro, but Cosmo can’t seem to sense him or Coran,” Keith says. “After getting the lions they are our next priority.”

\---

“We are moving… to Phase Four testing… now!” Cheung practically screams at his aide, who is instantly regretting taking this assignment when the admiral showed up a few days ago at the base and took over command.

“Sir, we’re not ready. And with the paladins missing, we need to focus-”

“Do you not… understand?” Cheung interrupts, “We cannot afford… to lose Shirogane. Not until… we can replicate his ability. We must… have the Atlas at our… disposal.”

The aide nervously looks at a console for a moment. “They are pulling him and the other prisoners out from the lab building now. Direction was to take them to the security complex.”

“I do not care… about the others… at this time. We will get to them… eventually,” Cheung declares. “Send Shirogane… to the hangar. Make sure… he does not awake… until we are ready for him. Get the doctor… there to prep him… on the ship. We launch as soon… as we have everyone. And get those lions… secured.”

\---

Forrester finds himself woken up by an alarming number of guards. They tell him to dress and he’s ferried off to the Atlas with barely a word.

The ship is abuzz with activity - it was clearly a hasty decision to launch, and the reason is not really clear until he’s practically pushed into the medical bay. Shirogane’s restrained on a treatment bed, a partially filled syringe labelled with a fast acting sedative the only thing hooked up to the IV line.

Shiro frankly looks like shit, lips pale and with a terrible pallor. He gives a weak cough every couple minutes and otherwise looks like he’s breathing too shallowly.

“What did you do to him?” Forrester demands to know, turning to the lead guard.

“There was an incident and his holding cell was filled with gas. Admiral Cheung has ordered that you prep him for another round of testing.”

“Are you kidding me?” Forrester blurts before he takes a step back for a moment to compose himself. “If you morons keep knocking him out cold for your own convenience, he’s not going to be healthy enough to do anything except drool into a helmet. As it is,” he feels for Shiro’s pulse, “This combo of sedatives has weakened his respiratory drive.”

A medic comes around with a simple oxygen mask, and slips the strap behind Shiro’s head while Forrester disconnects the syringe and replaces it with a saline drip.

“Tell Cheung that he’s in no shape for testing.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option,” a senior officer says, coming into the room. The doctor doesn’t recognize her, but assumes that the Chinese woman is originally from Cheung’s base. “If you will not prep him, then we have another doctor that will.”

“Look, either way, he’s not going to be any good to you if he’s unconscious. I need to pull a blood analysis to figure out what all is currently in his system, because if he does have a medical emergency during testing I need to know what I can safely give him.”

The ship lurches below them slightly. They’ve launched.

“Do what you need to do, doctor,” the woman tells him. “But we expect to begin testing within two hours.”

Forrester takes a moment to scrub his hands and forearms thoroughly, and reluctantly begins to prep Shiro. He and the other medic manage to get through about half of the preparations when the blood analysis comes back. There is indications of two, no, three different sedative drugs, and it’s no wonder why Shiro is still mostly out of it.

They get him into the lower half of the suit when he tries for another sternum rub. Shiro grimaces and groans at him, but it’s a better sign. They get the EEG electrodes in place, and snug on a thin protective cap over his hair before hoisting him into a limp seated position to pull the top half of the suit on and replace the outermost casing of the prosthetic stump over the suit shoulder.

He’s left laid out on his side in a recovery position, oxygen mask still in place and the suit unzipped at the front. The suit’s chestplate and left glove are left on the small table.

“Is he ready to go?” the stern woman asks.

“No,” Forrester sighs. “Something is wrong, and the combo of drugs he was given before I arrived is still causing issues. It’s definitely an overdose. Ideally we would continue to monitor and let him sleep it off.”

“Give him a stimulant,” he’s ordered.

“As a doctor, I cannot agree to this. It’s bad enough that you want to try testing again, but we can’t just-”

“Get him out and secure him in the brig,” she interrupts. “Tell Chao that we need him. Meanwhile, get Shirogane to the bridge.” She looks on as the flight surgeon is hauled out of the room, still protesting.

\---

Shiro finally wakes up from the daze he had been ensnared in only to find himself in another trap. He was uncomfortably tethered to the command chair of the Atlas again, and an unfamiliar Garrison doctor slowly pushes a medication into the IV port in his hand, which made his veins sting and heart pound as the fuzziness in his head is brutally exchanged with raw panic. The damned noise cancellation is on again, and the weird enforced silence aside from his shuddering breaths is disorienting. The nausea builds angrily and he actually dry heaves into the helmet. The suit rubs awkwardly around his throat near his larynx, but he ignores it.

The doctor keeps his firm grip on Shiro’s wrist and pulls the syringe out of the port before inserting another smaller one.

This one stings even more, and it’s only the saline that follows it that calms the nerves in his hand.

Everything around him feels out of focus, the slight orange tint of the helmet faceplate adding a surreal sheen to the bridge that he had never minded before but now is almost overstimulating.

He hadn’t noticed that his bare knuckles are white from gripping the armrest of the chair. Maybe it was a good thing they still have yet to give him back the prosthetic. He might have tried to punch something… or someone by now.

“Now, now, Shirogane…” Cheung’s voice crackles through the comm, and it’s only then that Shiro realizes that he has said the last thought out loud. “We just need... you to actually try… this time.”

‘He’s talking about connecting to the Atlas’, Shiro thinks. ‘Well, it didn’t work last time, because of-’

“Shit,” he says with enough vehemence that he now is aware of himself speaking out loud and catches himself before he says more about the prosthetic. Biting his tongue slightly, to make sure he doesn’t fully vocalize his thoughts, he realizes with dread that it is as though most of his inhibitions have gone out the window.

“What in the hell did you just give me?” he demands, feeling acutely woozy.

“Just what was needed... to secure your cooperation... this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the somewhat late post tonight, but I am getting caught up after the weekend and was satisfied with this enough after a rewrite of a big section to throw this up tonight.
> 
> I'm really not entirely sure what movie my next door neighbour is watching, but I hope it's good. Or it could be Jurassic World (weird roaring interspersed with screams). Either way, it's been an odd backdrop to an evening of writing.


	22. Chapter 22

Pidge is actively exchanging messages with Matt between working on a hack for the hangar security. She’s managed to pull up the camera feed already and the lions are sitting there with their particle barriers up. At least no one can get in, she decides.

<<Atlas has launched. We are out past Jupiter so might take some time to track their trajectory,>> Matt says.

<<We can’t find any records that indicate if our armour and bayards have been taken to a new location or not,>> she responds. <<If we assume it’s where we left it we may only have one chance.>>

<<Understood. We are on minimal manning, I don’t think we can support you in person but I’ll keep monitoring things. Krolia is en route back to Earth but we don’t know her ETA.>>

<<Please continue monitoring the Atlas, but let us know if you find any other info.>> she instructs her brother. <<We will work with a contact on base to try and get our gear. In theory, we can fly the lions without the armour but we need the bayards at the very least.>>

Keith and Lance have warily been trying to keep an eye out the windows, peeking out behind drawn curtains. Hunk has diverted his nervous energy to stress cooking with Romelle, while Colleen watches her daughter pull up this and that on the computer.

\---

From a control room off the bridge, Admiral Cheung hovers over the shoulders of the two flight surgeons he had hand picked to monitor the readings they were getting from Shirogane’s monitors.

“He has stopped actively vocalizing most of his thoughts,” one reported as the other doctor got settled. “Throat microphone is still picking up a little, but mostly just breathing sounds and him swallowing periodically.”

The other doctor looks over. “He may slip into subvocalizing if we can get him to focus on other things.”

“When he was first woken up with the stimulant, we picked up a little. This isn’t an exact science yet, there was a professor out in Europe looking into it but we don’t know if he survived the occupation. This is a theory at best that we might be able to figure out what he wasn’t telling us in the last test.”

“Shirogane must be hiding... something from us,” Cheung says forcefully, “There is no obvious reason... why he was unable to connect... to the Atlas during… the third test.”

“His EEG readings are showing some difference in pattern from the previous test, but it is mostly consistent with the pharmaceuticals we have him on.”

“To be honest, I am worried about the level of stress that he’s showing. Forrester was right, we should have let him metabolize out more of the sedatives before giving him anything else.”

“It might also be general fatigue. He’s having difficulties concentrating. Look at the eye tracker, he’s barely able to read the helmet display.”

“Blood glucose levels are within acceptable parameters, as is renal output. We don’t want to have to supplement with additional insulin so no need to increase the drip rate for the glucose line at this time.”

Most of the monitors flash into an angry red suddenly, as Shirogane curls into himself as much as the harness permits him and dry heaves again, nails scrabbling at his helmet. A medic grabs his wrist and encourages him to hold onto the armrest again.

It takes a couple minutes but his breathing evens out again, yet his pulse continues to thud at an unhealthy rate and his blood pressure is far too high. They can see him slumped forward in the harness, chin almost resting against the padding around the neck area.

“Our data from the second test suggests that he had to get into a meditative state of some sort to make the connection. I don’t think he’s capable of that right now.”

“Find a way... to get him capable!” Cheung thunders. The two doctors look at each other, their loyalty unquestioning, but both knowing what they’ve been ordered is practically impossible at this point.”

“Sir, there is not much we can do except let him recover. It was barely hours between tests. There is a real risk we could kill him.”

“Agreed. Nothing we could give at this stage replaces real rest, with real, natural sleep.”

Cheung angrily collects himself. “Fine. Get him somewhere... secure, but I want you to continue... monitoring him. And maintain him... on the serum. He may yet... tell us something useful. I must go find out... where the other paladins... have gone as I cannot... have them interfere here.”

The admiral storms out of the room.

\---

Shiro vaguely recalls being pulled off the harness points on the chair again, and getting laid out on his side on a gurney. He tries to roll onto his back before they strap him down but the connection point for the suit umbilical digs into his back uncomfortably. He was so nauseous and tired, but the thudding of his pulse in his ears was almost too much to bear.

He’d take the general weakness and fatigue from having his consciousness shoved into this body almost any day over this.

They push him down countless corridors to a small room, and he’s pulled upright and off the padded gurney, stumbling the couple steps inside in spite of the firm hands of the two medics supporting him. The suitcase sized life support unit the umbilical is connected to is secured to a wall. The last thing they do is pull the suit’s glove over his hand, where it is fastened around his forearm, and he’s left to lay on the padded floor of the special brig unit in the uncomfortable flight suit.

His body betrays him, and he slips into an exhausted sleep.

\---

Veronica almost misses it in the chaos of monitoring countless security feeds. A small group of security has popped up outside an auxiliary armoury near where one of the particle barrier generators is located. Since the battle with Sendak, it’s received minimal notice, as it simply holds some extra power packs in addition to a few spare parts for the generator.

It’s actually not far from her lab complex. And as she was helping Commander Holt a lot during the Galra occupation, she might not seem too out of place if she went to see it in person. So she sends Colleen a message, and leaves the relative safety of her office for the first time in hours.

Sure enough, there is a group of about a half dozen guards, heavily armoured but stupidly preoccupied with the building itself and not scanning the area around them instead of scanning the area around them.

<<This might be it,>> she messages to Colleen. <<There might be about 6 guards in total.>>

<<This is Keith,>> she gets back in return, <<I was able to remotely summon my bayard from about 10 metres on the Galra ship, but there was some line of sight. I also had my armour on.>>

<<Unarmed, I don’t know if the five of you plus me can take them on. None of us have protection,>> she replies.

<<Agreed. We need someone to create a distraction. Cosmo can ‘port us in one at a time to your location.>>

Veronica looks around, trying to think of something that would work. Other than the little armoury structure, all there really is in the immediate area is… the shield generator. Now, part of her was reluctant to damage it, but it wouldn’t take much.

<<Let me see, I have an idea. Get ready to move,>> she types back before stuffing the device into a pocket.

\---

Keith pries Hunk from the kitchen back to the living room. Allura and Lance are both pacing slightly, clearly nervous. They had unearthed a few crude implements, a makeshift shaft for Allura, a couple of baseball bats, down to a large hammer buried at the back of a shed - it was utterly ridiculous all things considered. Keith had spared with them all unarmed enough to know that their hand to hand skills were adequate against another unarmed assailant, but against another that was armoured and armed with proper weapons, well this was going to be another story.

Hopefully, Veronica is right about this. If they have to use Cosmo to teleport back to safety, they would no longer have someone there as a beacon for the wolf to find.

Lance is visibly anxious. He’s still very protective of his older sister, even though Veronica proved several times over that she can largely look after herself.

<<I’ve rigged the shield generator to blow. We have about 10 minutes. I’m grabbing cover from where I can still see the armoury shack.>> The message pops up on Pidge’s computer screen and she reluctantly hands it over to her mother and hurriedly stretches out before picking up the long coils of rope.

“Everyone ready?” Keith asks, pulling Cosmo close to him. Everyone nods except Hunk, who simply tries to take a deep breath, resigned to getting dragged along on this insane mission.

With three minutes before Veronica’s estimated time to go, Keith and Cosmo blink out of the room with a pop. Thirty seconds later, the space wolf is back for Lance, and one by one they are gone.

Romelle flops onto the vacated couch with an exaggerated sigh, and Colleen isn’t far behind her. All they can do now is wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, they will eventually get Shiro out XD
> 
> Tossing on my linguist hat for a bit, there has been some research done that suggests that subvocalization (which is basically your brain 'practicing' speech when you think to yourself or hear yourself in your head as you read) could be picked up with the right kind of sensors. Last I read up on it from credible sources (so forever ago) was that they hadn't really figured it out yet, but MRI technology has come a long way since I was an undergrad. I could imagine this as a sort of weird side project that some researcher putters away at in the future.
> 
> Throat microphones have been used by security and military folks for years, they sit over the larynx and work better in some noisy environments. Some people find them uncomfortable though. I actually remembered about it over the weekend while rereading part of one book on military aviation, and it made me wonder how much a well calibrated one could pick up subvocalization.
> 
> Comments and kudos always appreciated. I looked at my word count on my working file and yep, writing a novel. Maybe after this I'll work on my non-fiction book like I should have been doing. /That/ one might someday get published. Maybe.


	23. Chapter 23

The generator blows mere seconds after Allura arrives, the last of them to blink into the tight area maybe 50 metres from the armoury. There is a cloud of dust that immediately envelops the area and Keith, Lance, and Allura make a run for it as most of the guards move in the direction of the generator. Hunk hangs back to cover Veronica, and after hesitating, Pidge makes a go for it, following Allura.

Lance reaches the door first, slamming his palm on the door controls with no luck. Keith slides up next to him, and presses his eyes closed in concentration. It takes until Pidge has skidded next to them for it to appear in a streak of purple quintessance, but after a flash of elation in Keith’s expression he activates the blade and everyone gives him room to cut into the door lock.

Lance and Allura pry the door open and grab their own bayards. Keith yells across the way “Cosmo, send Veronica to safety!” and she blips out with the wolf in a few moments as Hunk books it over there.

Lance has the black undersuit half on by the time they start to hear the guards returning, and he hastily grabs the armour pieces. Cosmo pops back next to him and Keith and Hunk provide some cover as the other three pull their chest plates and arm armour on, then take over.

Cosmo is able to start porting them about a kilometre or two away, at the edge of what they can see off base, and the five of them only get a moment to catch their breaths and adjust their hastily donned armour. Crouching behind a rock formation that is the only cover for metres, they one by one try to relax and mentally call out to their lions.

It feels like it takes an eternity, but the chronometer on his helmet display insists that it is only a few mere doboshes when the roar of the lions is heard overhead. It has been weeks since they crashed following the battle to liberate Earth, but climbing into the waiting jaws of each of the lions feels like coming home in its own right.

The display within the black lion lights up as Keith slides into the pilot seat, thankfully cleaned of the blood he was told had stained it. He had only been back to the lion a few times since getting out of the hospital, the lion’s energy reserves too low to do much.

As it was, there was still not much power in the reserve. They could maybe get as far as Mars, but probably not much further.

“Pidge, get ahold of your brother. We need to know where the Atlas is now,” he says, turning on the comms.

“Will do,” she says, obviously running her own system checks.

“We have incoming vehicles,” Hunk calls out. “About a dozen ground based ones. I assume they are scrambling jets.”

“Let’s get up to orbit,” Lance calls out. “Even the MDFs are limited in how high they can follow us.”

“They are starting to shoot at us, go!” Allura yells. The five of them push off and make way to gain altitude.

“Matt says the Atlas is up near Lagrange point 1, if we go for L3 we might have some cover for a few minutes,” Pidge reports as they climb.

“Got it,” Keith replies.

They clustered near each other near where the lagrange point naturally collected an assortment of small space rocks, and Keith pulls off his helmet, letting it rest on his lap as he tries to take a few deep breaths and relax for a moment. “Pidge, Hunk,” he calls out. “Can you start a diagnostic on the lions? Looks like Black might only have about half of it’s normal energy reserves stored up.”

“Already started,” Hunk responds, “Yellow is consistent with what you have. No major structural issues but it seems like they’ve been using up most of the power reserves to self-repair.”

“Blue is at about 75%,” Allura reports. “But we managed to recharge a bit in the ocean before she took me to the base.”

“At about half, I’m starting the advanced diagnostics on Green first, then I’ll get the others going,” Pidge chimes in.

Lance shows up on a screen, shaking his head. “I’m only at about a third.”

“Damn,” Keith swears, “If we try to form Voltron we’ll deplete Red right away.”

“Not unless we can charge them ourselves,” Lance says.

“Too risky,” Keith replies. “We couldn’t figure it out on the way home, and we need to work out where Shiro, as well as Pidge’s dad and Coran are being held.”

“It’s reasonable to assume that Shiro is somewhere on board the Atlas,” Allura says.

“Mom mentioned that Veronica said that she believes that they did another test just a day ago. If he had another metabolic issue there is no way they could be trying again so soon.”

“Pidge, re-establish the secure link to your house,” Keith says while fumbling through the back of the lion for a hydration pouch.

“Sure.”

The connection goes through within a few minutes.

“Veronica?” Lance calls out, “You there?”

“Yeah, we’re here although we need to move soon. I don’t think it’s safe to stay.”

“I know you told my mom some of it,” Pidge says between bursts of typing, “But we need to know what all you are aware of with the Atlas.”

“I think you know most of it. There was a third flight test that was ordered by an Admiral Cheung who has taken command of the base. Shiro was able to walk on his own afterwards, but the test was very long, about 12 hours. I haven’t been able to pull any of the data. The Atlas is much more protected against hacking than the base, as I’ve been discovering for better or worse.”

Hunk whistles. “12 hours? Geez. If the testing didn’t mess with his blood sugar levels then not eating for that long might have done it on it’s own.”

“The prosthetic has been missing since he was brought back to the base. If it’s not on the Atlas it must be somewhere in a secure lab or something,” Veronica says.

“Is there a way to track it?” Lance asks.

“Not exactly,” Allura chimes in. “But we may be able to get a reading on its power source if we are close enough to it. Altean crystals of that type have an energy signature that is distinct from anything I’ve seen on Earth so far.”

“It’s a small crystal, we might have to get within close range,” Hunk says.

“Only the green lion has stealth capability. Is it worth the risk if we leave some of the lions here?” Lance ponders.

“Maybe,” Keith thinks, “And if we are close to the Atlas anyways, maybe Cosmo can sense Shiro this time.”

“Pidge, do you think you can lock out the controls of the Atlas once we get aboard?”

“It might take more time than we’ve got, Dad designed the system and it’s not as vulnerable as a Galra ship.”

“So do we do this?” Lance asks the group.

“We’re vulnerable up here if we stay too long. It’s now or never,” Keith decides before powering Black down to a low energy mode. He makes sure his helmet is secure, and throwing an arm over Cosmo’s neck, ‘ports over to Green.

The others follow suit and jet over to the green lion, cycling through the main airlock. The green lion is the smallest of the five, and it feels unusually cramped to Keith compared to the black lion, but he finds a spot to the side of the pilot seat to perch out of Pidge’s way and Cosmo curls up at his feet..

Pidge engages the stealth mode and begins to bring them closer to the Atlas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should have been trivia night but it's cancelled this week so heading out to treat myself with a nice meal.
> 
> I also finished the first draft of what should be the climax of this beast so food will help me plot out how to tie up the story and the outstanding subplots. 
> 
> Comments and kudos always appreciated.


	24. Chapter 24

“I hope you can tell me…. where the paladins... have escaped to,” Cheung says in a neutral tone to a room full of his command team. There is more than a few anxious looks exchanged around the room but near the end of the table, but one officer pulls up some information on the main boardroom display.

“That wolf, thing, that the black paladin has can teleport. We aren’t really sure of how it works or the range, but it consistently could go between places on and off the base without too many issues. The hospital staff mentioned that after he regained consciousness following the battle, that the wolf would pop in periodically to stay with him,” the report begins.

“Our best guess is that the wolf was able to locate its owner and take him somewhere off base, as he was the first to go missing from his detainment block. The other four paladins disappeared starting within minutes, and we didn’t manage to locate them again until they show up here near the edge of the base.”

“The older sister of the one who pilots the red lion is a senior officer posted to this base. She was spotted near the generator station on a random camera sweep, and then again close to where the five paladins suddenly appeared. We have to assume she is involved, and we have someone pulling records around her activities for the last week or so.”

“How would they have known which armoury block we stored their equipment in?”

“Probably luck, but also there normally would not have been guards stationed there full time. It’s usually just monitored by random patrol.”

“Where... are they now?” Cheung asks, clearly annoyed. More nervous looks are exchanged around the room.

“The lions, uh, managed to activate and break through the hangar door. They went about two kilometres off base then launched. We are still having issues with the tracking satellites so we lost contact as they began to pass the upper atmosphere.”

“They… have escaped,” Cheung’s teeth audibly grinded. “Get Shirogane... under increased surveillance.”

“He’s in a room that should be shielded from scans, but there is guards posted.”

“There were also... guards posted where... the paladin’s armour... was stored!” Cheung says with increasing venom in his tone. “The Garrison is... still in disarray. I need the Atlas and Voltron... to cement my leadership... before the admiralty kowtows... to the weak provisional governments... that are all that are left... of what kept us from properly securing... this planet and its people... from outside influences.”

“The Garrison’s mandate is to protect the planet while furthering our knowledge of the universe,” one officer protests. “Not subjugate our own planet like the Galra did to us.”

“Our pointless missions... led the Galra straight to us! We have no choice... but to do what is needed... to make sure it... never happens again.”

There is an uncomfortable silence in the room, and well over half of the people sitting around the table exchange concerned glances. When they were ordered onto the Atlas, few thought that they would be privy to what by all accounts appears to be the start of a military coup.

Cheung pushes back from the table abruptly. “I must deal with… other matters. I do not care how… you do it, but I need… Voltron, and the paladins… captured. If they… will not do what… is necessary, then they must… be taken out of the… equation.”

\---

From the relative quiet of an office not much bigger than a washroom stall somewhere near engineering, an officer checks the secure connection and initiates a call down to Earth. Since the end of the occupation, she’s been trying to get updates from old colleagues from her political days, a lifetime ago since she joined the military in a naive hope for better job security.

She never did manage to confirm if this one friend made it through the years of the Galra occupation, but by pinging off the three known contact addresses she has, she hopes that one will go through.

It takes a couple minutes, but the connection amazingly goes through.

“Catherine!” a familiar voice rings out from the speakers. She turns the volume down a couple notches. “It’s so good to hear from you! We weren’t sure where you ended up in, well, you know.”

She gives a bit of a chuckle before clearing her throat. “Sean, it’s been too long. But before I get too far, are you still working at the parliament?”

Sean pauses momentarily, “Officially, only temporarily. But they are bringing back anyone that they can find, there is so much work to do before the provisional government can present the new constitution. Why? You looking for a new job?”

“If only it was that simple. But I need your help.”

\---

The green lion hovers a few kilometres from the Atlas, which rests dwarfed by the sunlit moon at the first lagrange point. Pidge is sitting cross legged on the pilot seat, running scans of the Atlas, while the others sprawl behind her. Hunk and Allura have their wrist displays up, but Keith and Lance are all but passed out in the back of the cramped space of the cockpit.

“How much longer until we can go?” Lance asks, who bounces a hand off the faceplate of his helmet out of reflex in an attempt to stifle a yawn. Shaking his head, he finally gives up and pulls his helmet off, and gives his eyes a rub.

“I think we are getting too much interference from the main crystal powering the Atlas to pick up on the one that powers Shiro’s prosthetic,” Hunk sighs.

“Okay, any word on if Shiro is on board the Atlas then?” Keith says as he carefully squeezes out a biteful of food goo from a packet.

“All I can really tell is that there is about 150 humans,” Pidge says. There are a couple areas with higher shielding, but they are consistent with the engineering core and a couple small sections off of that. I would need my dad to tell me what is in those.”

“They’ve been launched long enough that they must be starting rest cycles,” Keith thinks. “But that only takes maybe a third of the personnel out of the equation, and only until they sound an alarm.”

“Minimal staffing is about 5 on the bridge, another 15 in engineering, plus another 15 or so manning secondary systems. 5 support crew… plus however many security personnel,” Hunk ponders out loud as Keith tosses him a pouch of food goo. “If we can’t lock down certain areas, it’ll be tough to systematically search the ship.”

“Someone will have to get on to the ship to gather more information,” Allura speaks up. “We simply don’t have enough to go with.”

“Who’s going to do that? I mean, we’re all conspicuous. Allura’s ears, Pidge is short, Hunk’s huge, Keith has the scar…” Lance rattles off.

“Which leaves it to you, Lance,” Keith says with a bit of a smirk.

“Huh, what? No,” he protests in return.

Pidge slides off her seat with a small grunt, and weaves her way to the back between everyone’s legs. Cosmo gets shooed into the hold and she plunks down next to Lance. “I once found this out by accident from Coran, but if you do this-” she squeezes the wrist computer on Lance’s glove a certain way, “- it can pop off like this. It won’t give a display, but it’ll still provide the sonar imaging reading if we pre-program it to scan around you and send the data back to us securely. It should fit like this in a uniform pocket.”

Pidge pops it back into the slot on Lance’s glove as everyone gives a dumbstruck look. She shrugs her shoulders. “Sorry, I never thought to pass it on to anyone. I thought Coran told some of you.” She taps on the display and programs it for Lance. “I’m also going to have it give us an audio feed. It can’t play any audio on its own so it’ll be one sided unless he can use the secure text communicator, but we can listen in back here. So Lance can tell us if he finds Shiro or when we should use him as a beacon for Cosmo to teleport us over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over here on the home front I'm sort of giddy to say that I finally feel like I am getting close to finishing this thing. I've been writing this mostly in the order it's posted, supplemented with some notes/outlines for future chapters, but (instead of going to bed on time like a reasonable office worker) I was up a bit late last night when I realized that I knew how I wanted this to end so pushed out that chapter.
> 
> Now it's just a matter of finishing filling in everything in between. I haven't broken later parts into chapters yet but somewhere between 30 and 35 chapters all together sounds about right.
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated.


	25. Chapter 25

Keith launches out of the green lion along with Lance, and they push off towards the Atlas. All in all, it’s a relatively short trip, and they pull themselves to a halt just above the ship’s hull, near an airlock. No matter how well insulated the Atlas might be, two bodies hitting the hull shell with almost any speed would make a heck of a thunk that would be audible from the inside.

They carefully make their way to the airlock controls, and after a moment to compose himself, Lance activates the airlock command. They slip inside, reorient themselves, and let the airlock cycle them inside the ship. Amazingly, there is no one in the anteroom and Keith rummages through a locker, grabbing a random junior officer’s uniform that looks to be about the right size while Lance pops out the wrist computer and peels out of the armour in record time. Keith shoves the armour into a mesh bag, and making sure that Lance is good to go, silently waves Lance good luck before cycling out the airlock again.

He can see the twenty foot sonar bubble around Lance on his wrist computer, clips the bag of the armour parts to the belt of his own suit, and tethers himself to a random handhold he finds on the hull. He should be close enough to help extract Lance if something goes to shit, but is less likely to get spotted if he waits outside the ship.

Lance is moving at an average pace, long legs taking him from the maintenance area they entered from towards the core of the ship. Pidge had identified areas with additional shielding that she didn’t recognize from when they were on the ship during the second flight test.

As long as Lance didn’t get too cocky, the junior officer’s uniform should be enough of a disguise from the mass of bodies manning the ship. Keith presses a couple buttons on the wrist display, and Pidge takes over from afar, adjusting the scanner to look for the smaller signature of the Balmaran crystal that powers Shiro’s prosthetic. The plan was for Lance to do a lap around the main engineering labs surrounding the core of the ship, then look for Shiro in the obvious places, the bridge, the brig, or the medical bay. Barring that, the third phase was look for anything that could be a shielded room converted to hold Shiro.

Inside the ship, Lance is about halfway around the loop when he notices a cluster of security officers not far from an entrance to what looks like a lab from the outside. He does his best not to change his pace as he moves by them, hidden by another officer passing him in the relatively narrow corridor. There is only four of them, but aside from outside the bridge and the main engineering bay entrance, it seems almost like overkill and he makes a mental note of the location. He gets most of the way around the loop before he slips into a washroom. It’s cramped, but should be as safe as anywhere on the ship, and he pulls the secure communication link along with the computer module from his suit from the pocket of the uniform pants.

“I hope you all can hear this,” he says quietly. “But there is a cluster of security near Lab 2-38, near the brig. I don’t want to chance passing them directly again unless I have to. Has the arm come up on the scans yet?”

The small text communicator pops up with a message: <<Possible signature in Lab 2-17. Sonar suggests two people in the room. Give us a moment, looking at Lab 2-38.>>

“Should we try for the arm first?” he wonders out loud.

<<There is one person inside 2-38. Might be secure quarters. Were you sure it was a lab?>>

“It was marked as one from outside but I couldn’t hang around to check.”

<<Both rooms are adjacent to rooms accessible from the inner engineering corridor. Main scans can’t see in but we can with the sonar. See if you can get into 2-82 first. They didn’t fill the inner labs during the second test, they may still be vacant now. Let us know if it’s empty and we’ll send Cosmo and Allura to you.>>

“Got it,” he replies, shoving both devices back into his pockets and he makes his way back out the corridor. He backtracks to the entry to the inner corridor and finds the room Pidge directed him to. He’s surprised to see that it is unlocked, but he slips in. It’s almost too easy.

He pulls the secure communicator out again and types quickly <I’m in, scan the first lab again.>>

<<One person. Allura incoming.>>

He’s expecting it, but it is still a slight shock when Allura pops next to him with Cosmo. She pulls out her bayard, and hands his over. It transforms into the blaster rifle variant and he’s able to use the display to ‘look’ into the next room. There is a single person wandering about, and a guard outside the door. Allura has her wrist display up and she confirms the energy signature.

“It’s there,” she says simply.

“Just knock the person inside the lab out, and I’ll grab it. We port right back here then we blip over a couple rooms so we are adjacent to that other lab.”

Allura nods, and Cosmo ports them into the adjacent room. Allura’s elbow collides with the unsuspecting lab tech’s head almost immediately, and Lance frantically grabs the heavy arm from the table, they blip back to the other side of the wall with a pop, and they repeat it, skipping vacant labs a couple more times until they find themselves in an empty one that should be close to where they think Shiro is being held.

“Pidge, are we in the right room?” Allura asks urgently as Lance adjusts his grip on the arm

“Yes. Keith is coming in the airlock. As soon as he’s in, Cosmo will retrieve him and bring him to you. I’m bringing Green as close as I can without setting off sensors.”

“Hunk here, sonar shows just one person inside, laying down. Mass is consistent with Shiro, but the main sensors from the lion can’t see in.”

“I’m in,” Keith says over the comm. Cosmo blinks out for a minute but reappears shortly with Keith who exchanges Shiro’s arm for Lance’s armour. They give Lance a minute to hastily dress.

The three of them look at each other, ready to go, and Keith speaks up. “I’ll go in first, see if it is Shiro. Then you two come in and we port back to Green in pairs.” Lance and Allura nod, and Keith blinks out of the room with Cosmo.

In the next room, Keith lands on the padded flooring with a soft thud. Shiro’s laid out prone on the floor, face obscured, the umbilical from the suit snaking out to a heavy looking black case near the entranceway.

“Get in here,” is all he says, as he rolls Shiro to the side. Shiro’s eyes scrunches up and he groans, but remains limp. Allura and Lance are ported in by Cosmo and Allura is almost immediately beside him, helping to pull Shiro into a sitting position, hand on the helmet as she scans him with her wrist computer.

“Vitals are stable but they have him connected to… a lot,” she says. Earth medical technology is still crude to her eyes.

“I can’t see how to unhook this unit from his suit without losing the oxygen feed,” Lance reports, looking over the portable life support system. “The suit itself only has a small reserve supply built in. It’s not meant as a standalone pressure suit.”

“We don’t have time, we will need to bring it with us-” Keith decides before noticing the casing around Shiro’s shoulder joint light up. “Woah, well the prosthetic has reconnected.”

Shiro makes a slight “hurk” sound, and shifts in Keith’s grip, eyes cracking open under the helmet faceplate.

“Shiro?” Allura tilts his head up slightly. The prosthetic hand reaches back to yank the noise canceller from it’s port on the helmet, and she can see him wince for a split moment.

“We are going to get you off the ship. Keith, help me stand him up. Lance, grab the unit-” Shiro shakes his head and rubs at where the throat microphone is obvious under the suit material, then raises a single finger. One moment, he’s asking silently.

With a grunt, he tries to sit up more steadily, and with Keith supporting him from the back, presses both hands down on the floor and the prosthetic glows slightly.

Shiro sways slightly, and Keith readjusts to sit behind him more securely. Lance is connecting to the computer on the life support unit. “I’ve got the signal,” Pidge reports over the comm.

“I need to kill the transmitter, they’re definitely noticing this,” Pidge warns. “His vitals are all over the place. What in the hell is he doing?”

Keith groans as Shiro's back stiffens against him, eyes blown wide and now gasping for air. The lights flicker and the door controls suddenly turn Altean blue from their normal Garrison orange.

“Shit, is he taking over the Atlas?” Lance shrieks.

“Guys?” Hunk’s voice has an greater tone of panic than normal. “Something is happening with the ship. I don’t think it’s transforming, but the comm traffic is screaming about getting locked out of controls.”

“We’re getting him out!” Keith yells, shifting to a crouch to pull up under Shiro’s arms.

“No!” Shiro says firmly, voice muffled and hoarse. “I have this.” His head leans back, resting against Keith’s armour, chest heaving. “Cheung is trying to get to an escape pod. I just need…” he winces momentarily, “I just need some more time.”

“Cheung? Like, the admiral from the Chinese base?” Keith asks.

Shiro nods. “He’s behind this. The… ugh, escape pod controls are independent from the ship. Get him before he’s gone. I have almost everything else locked down,” he says, eyes vacantly looking around at things that clearly only Shiro can see.

Allura takes over from Keith, and he and Lance move towards the wolf. “Which escape pod bank?” Lance asks.

Shiro pauses for a moment. “One deck up, starboard flank.”

“Got it,” Keith says, before he and Lance put hands on Cosmo’s back and they disappear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In celebration of the weekend (and because there was no good spot to put a break in it) this chapter is a bit longer than normal. I hope you all enjoy.


	26. Chapter 26

Sean plunks down in the chair in his makeshift office. His friend Catherine had some serious allegations about the admiral who had essentially taken command of the Garrison, and the emergency briefing he presented to the interim cabinet was going to cause a massive scandal as soon as the news leaks to the media.

Far too often in the course of human history, had a power vacuum been filled by a handful of military strongmen while elected governments stood by, paralyzed by an inability or lack of willingness to act.

He just hoped he would still have a job at the end of this.

\---

Veronica had long since pushed the laptop away and steps outside, squinting against the angle of the setting sun. Pidge had sent her a set of coordinates shortly after she was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor of the Holt’s hallway by Keith’s cosmic wolf. She, Colleen, and Romelle quickly made way to the old shack that belonged to Keith’s father, knowing that it was just a matter of time before the Garrison came looking for her the longer she stayed near the base.

Following the lions’ escape, there was very little activity on the base other than increased security presence. Most of the senior commanders seemed to be up on the Atlas, which was largely out of contact.

So from their perspective, if the paladins including her brother hadn’t needed to contact her again yet, no news was good news.

She had routed all their phones through a secure scrambler, so she was a little surprised when she got a message through her personal contact number. Pulling out her phone, she opens the message. Years ago, before she had joined the military, she did a couple years at a civilian academy. Her classmate Catherine was quite involved with politics, and even interned in the government for a while before making an unexpected switch to follow Veronica into the Garrison.

They may have both gone on to become senior officers over the course of the war, but they worked in largely different fields. Catherine was a logistics strategist, but never lost her strong sense of right and wrong.

<<Cheung is planning a coup. The provisional government has been alerted,>> was all the message read. Veronica wishes that she felt any surprise, but instead only had a sense of resigned frustration. She sits on the porch steps for a while before typing in her reply: <<Let’s end this.>>

\---

Lance was well aware that the moment that they popped into the corridor a deck up that all element of surprise was gone. Lights flickered in tone from orange to teal periodically around them, and nearly every door control read “LOCKED”.

If it wasn’t for the uniform, he would have barely recognized the admiral from the photos that lined the walls of the hall in the administrative wing of the Garrison academy, showing the top leadership. He was of average height and appearance for a person of his age and ancestry. There was only one security officer and a woman with him, as they moved past the few stunned crew members of the Atlas who were not locked into other areas of the ship.

Keith sprinted ahead, Cosmo right behind him. The wolf is the first of the three of them to be in a position to make a move, and Cosmo takes a leap and knocks the security officer off his feet with a growl. Cheung skids to a halt, looking back just as Keith collides with the admiral and pins the older man to the wall of the corridor.

“What… have you all done?!” Cheung yells furiously, pushing back on Keith’s forearm enough to swing to the side where Lance manages to grab onto him from behind, pulling him down to his knees and then prone onto the floor. Lance manages to pin down one arm with his knee, and the other he holds down with all his weight through his arms.

Keith spins around to kick the security officer in the stomach, dropping him again to the floor as Cosmo corners the woman against a door as she clutches a large tablet.

“I’d love to know the same thing!” Keith yells. “What on earth have you done to Shiro?”

Cheung manages a pained laugh from the floor until Lance shifts more of his weight to where his other knee presses against the admiral’s back. “Only what… was needed to ensure… his cooperation.”

“What do you mean by that?” Lance questions loudly. “Drugging people? Holding them against their will? Non-consensual medical testing? What have we reverted to?”

“I do not need to... answer to you!” Cheung spits.

The lights flicker above them for a split moment, and Shiro’s voice crackles from the speaker above them: “Actually, you do now. The provisional government has issued an edict. Admiral Cheung, you have been suspended of your rank as per emergency degree of the cabinet and are to be retained under arrest for suspicion of conspiracy to enact a coup.”

Shiro’s voice comes through their helmet comms, “Get him in a brig. The base will be relaying new orders shortly and delegating a temporary commander. I... don’t feel so good,” they hear him trail off before the comm goes quiet.

By this time, there is a crowd of personnel. Most were junior officers and other crew, but there was a few more senior officers. Lance notices the hushed whispers and angry glances, and there is more than a few people now physically standing in front of the escape pod hatches, having perceived that the admiral had attempted to flee.

A team of security personnel arrive shortly, and take over detaining the three. Lance offers to oversee them getting tossed into the regular brig cells on the lower deck. “Keith,” he says softly, “Go to him.”

\---

Keith uses Cosmo to port next to Shiro as the controls across the ship reverted to orange. Allura was holding him up as he sits with limbs sprawled on the padded floor, his eyes shut but chest still moving deeply with each breath. The prosthetic lays next to him, still glowing teal.

“He’s disconnecting from the ship,” she says. Her eyes glance at the life support unit laid next to the wall. “That thing… it’s making a beep now every half a dobosh or so. I cannot see the display from here.”

He ghosts a hand over Shiro’s left wrist before moving over and looking at the screen. It’s showing that most of the IV fluids it held are now depleted. It must have been what was supplementing him to hold onto to the connection with the ship as long as he had. “We need to get him to medical,” he says.

Allura nods. “Much of his natural quintessence is depleted.”

The door to the room opens with a hiss, Lance hovering outside the door as the flight surgeon, Forrester, steps into the room followed by a medic carrying a large kit.

“Hey Shiro,” the doctor calls out. Shiro’s eyes scrunch up a little under the helmet but there’s not much reaction otherwise. The doctor pulls out a tablet and syncs it to show the vitals. “Grab the oxygen, I want to get the helmet off but his sats are still not great.” The medic nods and pulls out a canister and mask from the bag.

Keith gently unlatches the helmet release and tugs it off as Allura shifts to allow Shiro’s head to rest against her lap instead of against her chestplate. The mask is placed over his nose and mouth, the thin elastic looped behind his head over the cap that protects the placement of the EEG electrodes still nestled in his hair.

Forester tugs the glove of the suit off, and taking the kit offered by the medic, pulls a blood sample from the IV catheter in Shiro’s hand and caps it.

“Let’s get him prepped for transport down to the base. Order a shuttle to be on standby. He’s not critical, but needs to be monitored.”

They peel the suit off and Forrester is able to disconnect the lines from the suit umbilical connection by the time the transport gurney arrives. He leaves the main IV catheter in, but pulls the one from Shiro’s hand, eliciting a tired wince before Keith, Lance, and the medic move to lift him onto the soft padding of the stretcher.

Allura helps with covering him in the thin blanket, and they nestle Shiro’s prosthetic beside him along with the remaining medical equipment he’s hooked up to in the stretcher basket.

Shiro just looks exhausted, not the deathly pale tone of the second flight test but drained. The bag of glucose and electrolyte solution lays over his chest. They each grab a handle and lift the stretcher basket up, setting it on top of the gurney waiting outside the room.

“Lance,” Keith calls out, stepping to one side of the corridor. “I’ll head down with him, but if you and Allura use Cosmo to go back to Green, you can retrieve the other lions and tow Black to the hangar here on the Atlas. I’m sure they will want us all down at the base right away for debriefing.”

Lance’s expression was fairly neutral, and he nods. “Let us know when he’s settled.”

“Will do.”

They load Shiro into a small shuttle, and Keith perches at the end of a bench seat next to the flight surgeon to be close to Shiro’s head. Shiro has slipped into a light sleep, but Dr. Forrester does not seem concerned.

“He was only able to connect if he had the prosthetic with him,” the doctor says, humming to himself.

“It seems that way,” Keith agrees. “It’s powered with a crystal that Allura had with her on her circlet. I never really thought about it, but it might be what helped her control the castle of lions.”

“And in turn allows him to connect to the Atlas. Interesting.”

“Coran and Commander Holt can probably confirm it,” Keith says tiredly.

“When we get to the base, I’m sure they will want to do your initial debrief first,” Forrester tells him, “But I want you to come try to find me when you’re done. I’m going to keep him overnight at least to rest under observation, but I can put a cot in the room for you. If you’re going to camp out in his room anyways you might as well be able to lay down.”

“I appreciate that,” Keith says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been playing around with the order of some sections so this chapter wound up being kind of long, but knowing you all there will probably be no complaints haha
> 
> I went to bed pretty early last night and after a solid sleep pushed out drafts of a couple more chapters this morning, followed by some editing this afternoon once I got home from adulting, er, buying groceries (and wine!). 
> 
> Aside from one, maybe two chapters more to round out the ending, gosh darn I think the drafts for the remainder of the story is mostly complete. I do want to expand on a few things and rewrite a section or two in other chapters as I try to check off a number of loose plot threads though, but it should not impact the daily updates.
> 
> To answer a comment that came up, and only because I don't think I'll address in directly in the fic is my personal theory / head canon on how Cosmo's teleportation sort of works. Based on what we see in canon, it appears that our good friend the space pet can port out of line of sight only relatively short distances, and can only take 1-2 others with him at a time. Where my head canon may diverge from the actual canon is that I have guessed that the distance thing can be expanded upon if he can sense those he knows (using them as a beacon if you will), but because I wanted to be realistic I decided that it only seems to work if that person is conscious (and probably awake under normal circumstances, although I have him finding Keith while he's still in bed, albeit probably just about to wake up for the morning). So because Shiro has been drugged to the gills for enough chapters that I don't feel like counting right now, Cosmo probably was never going to be able to port to him without the general proximity thing coming into play.


	27. Chapter 27

The first thing that Sam Holt does when they release him from the cell they tossed him in after almost a couple weeks in the little suite was call his wife. Then he checks on Coran, and the two others he quickly discovers is a distant cousin of Shiro’s and her friend. They are both shaken, but grateful to be taken to a quiet wing of the base hospital to be checked out.

The debriefings begin shortly, first asking for each of their statements of the turn of events from the last few weeks. It’s only then that they are given an opportunity to learn what had happened around them since, while they were cut off from the world.

It takes into the next day before he’s allowed to see his wife in person but he’s content to sit with her for nearly an hour before Matt arrives and Colleen is asked to go speak to investigators again. Katie will be delayed longer, her debriefing involving more stages as well.

It’s going to be a long process, they are warned by the civilian police and government officials tasked with unravelling the coup attempt.

\---

Keith is released from the debriefing with the warning that they will be contacting him to return to answer more questions at some point during the next day, and he’s dropped off at his quarters to clean up and change.

The long, hot shower eases the ache in his back and shoulders, but it feels great to be clean again as he pulls on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. He tosses a uniform into an overnight bag, then uses Shiro’s credentials to access his room down the hall, tossing in a change of clothes and some of Shiro’s toiletries in with his stuff before he makes the trek to the base hospital.

Forrester was gone, off for his own debrief, but there was a cot tucked into the corner of the dimly lit hospital room.

Shiro’s asleep on his back. There is a few monitoring strips visible under the hemmed collar of the patient gown, but other than the IV line and the nasal cannula, he looks much better. The prosthetic arm lays on top of the covers. Keith sits next to him for a few minutes, before he heaves a massive yawn and gives up the vigil in favour of kicking off his shoes and laying down on the cot, tossing the blanket over himself.

It only feels like minutes have passed, but Keith wakes to the sound of Lance’s light footsteps in the room hours later as early morning light filters into the room.

Shiro’s rolled over onto his side, face pressed into the pillow but still asleep. The prosthetic appears to hang precariously on the edge of the mattress next to the guardrail. Lance sits down on the beside chair and waves Keith a small hello. He’s in uniform, and although it doesn’t look like he got much sleep, he skims the paper chart that had been left hanging at the bottom of the bed.

Keith gets up from the cot and pads over to the small washroom, taking his time to wash his face before stepping back into the room. Lance gestures towards the door, so Keith shoves his feet into his shoes and they step out.

“The nurses said that you two just slept through the night. He looks like he’s okay,” Lance tells him with a tired smile. “I was asked to let you know that they would like to do a second debrief after lunch with the five of us together. They’re interviewing Pidge’s parents now.”

“Thanks for the update. When did you get to bed?” Keith asks.

“Too late,” Lance says. “But I woke up after a few hours and couldn’t get back to sleep so I came here.”

“I don’t think they will release Shiro until Forrester can come check on him again.”

“I figured as much. Why don’t you go back and grab your uniform. I can stay here,” Lance offers.

“I brought it with me,” Keith replies. “I wasn’t sure how long he’d sleep.”

“He’s going tell you to stop hovering, you know that right?” Lance says with a chuckle.

“Yeah yeah,” Keith rolls his eyes, “It’s not like he hasn’t done the same.”

Lance’s pocket buzzes, and he pulls out his phone. “Hunk’s going to bring some brunch stuff down before we have to debrief again,” he says. “Asking if we have requests.”

“No, anything’s fine.”

A nurse walks past them and steps towards Shiro’s room. “He’s up,” she says, and the boys follow her into the room. Shiro’s sitting up in the bed with the tubing from the oxygen cannula pooled on his lap, and Lance plays with the bed controls so that he can rest against the pillows while the nurse checks the IV tubing.

“How are you feeling?” Keith asks.

“Like the Atlas stepped on my head, but I’ll be fine,” Shiro yawns before accepting the glass of water and taking a sip. “My sides ache a bit.”

“Your kidneys might be tender for a while,” the nurse says.

He shifts a bit in the bed and frowns slightly, lifts the covers up for a moment and grumbles a little. “I’ll be even better once that… thing, is out. And someone gives me pants.”

The nurse just laughs. “The doctor will be by within an hour and I’m sure he’s going to sign off on your release. In the meanwhile, don’t try removing it on your own. It’ll hurt.” She grabs the tubing from the cannula and leaves the room with a chortle.

Shiro shoots them all a peevish glance as Keith and Lance smother their snickering. “Don’t you two have something better to do than hover here?”

“See? I told you he’d say that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished up what I think is the last of the draft chapters on this thing this afternoon. I'll probably be in doing editing over the next few days until it's all up but I'm going to start loading the last chapters into Ao3 this evening.
> 
> Because there is only about 4 chapters left to post, I'm not opposed to continuing with a chapter a day updates, but let me know if anyone would really like it posted more quickly than that once I am done final edits on the remaining parts.


	28. Chapter 28

It takes the better part of a week for the whole story to unravel. Admirals Sanda and Cheung are clearly not the only ones to have espoused protectionist and xenophobic views, and there is a handful of others in senior ranks who are encouraged either to retire or are asked to leave. The provisional government might have been in its infancy, but there was a clear and strong realization not only among the political leaders but within much of the military that change was necessary.

Cheung, along with a handful of his aides, had been retained for military tribunals. While the coup attempt was by far the most egregious of his crimes, it became evident that his actions during the lead up to and during the Galra occupation merited a long list of other charges in its own right. Shiro was glad to record his statements for the tribunals, knowing he might not be present in person by the time that the judicial system caught up and the trial actually occurs.

The scientific and engineering branches of the Galaxy Garrison are tasked with working with the Voltron coalition to incorporate and share technologies. The leadership structure is reworked, and the military wing is placed firmly under the oversight of the cabinet. The organizational restructuring will take time, but the first moves seem promising.

Shiro had spent most of a day following his release alternating between debriefings of his own and sitting with his cousin. He was both furious and apologetic over getting her tied up in the whole thing. She insisted that she would be fine, but allowed Keith to quietly return her and Yuuji back to Japan after a couple days.

Shiro’s just about sick of the endless meetings with the government, the remainder of the admiralty, and dealing with the persistent but aggravating issue that is the Atlas.

Sam Holt, Coran, sometimes Allura, and Dr. Forrester have all been pouring over the (disturbingly detailed) information that Cheung’s testing on him had gathered. He gets pulled in for scans a few times over the week, but one afternoon Sam calls him up saying that they wanted to discuss options with him.

“Trust me,” he says, trying hard not to whine, “I would love nothing more than to be able to connect to the Atlas. I just also really don’t want to deal with a medical emergency every single time.”

“Well, we think we have figured out the cause,” Sam says. “And if we are right, we might also have a solution.”

“We knew when we collected the crystal remains of the castle of lions that it likely was not as powerful as the castle-class crystal that powered the castle,” Coran starts off. “It was remarkable that it was able to power and trigger the initial transformation of the Atlas in the first place.”

“But quite simply, it’s not enough on it’s own to run the truly advanced features for extended periods,” Sam chimes in.

“The crystal that that been in my circlet was a family heirloom, and although I was aware that it had substantial power for its size, I never fully realized how much I probably had drawn on it over the decaphoebs to allow me to use Altean alchemy and power certain functions in the castle,” Allura says. “When these three suggested that it might have been the catalyst for the connection between a single person and the castle’s crystal, it made perfect sense.”

“Shit, it was my arm then,” Shiro says, awed. “I couldn’t connect no matter how hard I tried while Cheung had it locked up somewhere away from me. I realized that the arm had something to do with it, but I didn’t think about the crystal that powers it.”

“We had to search the records, which took a few days, but both crystals came from the same Balmara,” Coran says. “They are intricately linked.”

“Coran and Allura have been trying to explain quintessence to me,” Forrester cuts in. “That it is a life force possessed by all living things. Well, we know from some of the medical data that when you’ve connected each time to the Atlas, a few things have happened. Firstly, that you are able to maintain the connection for a short period on your own.”

Sam nods. “We cannot measure it, but Allura believes you were transferring your personal quintessence to the ship, to make up for a shortage of power available through the main crystal. In turn, your body responds by trying to make up for it by engaging in an unsustainable metabolic rate.”

“My body was trying to power the ship without realizing it,” Shiro says and Allura nods.

“We managed to sustain you longer through medical intervention,” Forrester says with a hint of regret, “but you probably started each connection with less and less of this quintessence stored up.”

“So, number one, we think that now we have access to Balmaran crystals again, we can place another on the Atlas. Between the two, we think there will be enough power that while it could still be tiring for you, you shouldn’t pass out like a fainting Pymerian groslopper each time you try to control the ship,” Coran says proudly, ignoring the confused glances from everyone except Allura at the random reference to some creature Shiro is sure Coran has just made up.

“Uh, that’s great Coran. It’d be fantastic if the solution is that simple.”

“It will take at least a few of your Earth weeks to produce a crystal of this class, but we can then test the connection.”

“There is maybe some more to this than is obvious. We have done some detailed genetic comparisons between this body and your, uh, original one,” Sam says, somewhat sheepishly. “Most differences are so minor that they are probably mutations that occurred during and after the cloning process. But we did notice a few more substantial gene differences, which suggest that the Galra did a few minor interventions when this body was created.”

“Interventions? You mean like gene therapy? Keith mentioned something back after the second test.” Shiro says.

“In a way. We think they needed to introduce something that when combined with the prosthetic arm they equipped the, er, clone with, would allow for the witch to be able to exert control. We aren’t sure which one of the changes in your genetic code allows for this, so it might be a combination of them. There is no way to know if any of these might have eased your connection to Altean tech, and to be honest, we may never know for sure. But there was one other genetic change that we found, and we felt you should know more about it.”

Forrester brings up some graphics on the meeting room display. “We found this change to one of your genes. Your original body had a mutation here, and with some computer simulations, we think this was what caused your degenerative condition to manifest in your late teens.”

“Oh,” Shiro says. “They did say that the muscular dystrophy was likely genetic."

Sam smiles at him and brings up a comparison. “We have confirmed that the gene in this body is normal. You shouldn’t have any issues from it.”

Shiro sits there for a moment with a stunned but happy look on his face. “I don’t know what to say. I think I always feared it would manifest eventually again. This is a relief. Really.”

“I have one more piece of good news for you, Shiro,” Sam says. He slides over a tablet to him, and he takes a look at the formal message.

“The remaining members of the admiralty met this morning. They have issued commendations for you and all of the paladins. They fully support that there is much work for Voltron to do away from Earth, to work with the coalition to stabilize the situation following the fall of the Galra empire.”

Shiro stops skimming the text and looks up, “Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes, the Atlas is officially being assigned to support Voltron in those efforts. Congratulations, captain. You’re being given command of the Atlas. The promotion will take a while to become official but I’ve been asked to help you prepare the ship to depart on this new mission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure there are a few of you who have been waiting for this part. Enjoy!
> 
> As a side note, genetics is really not my specialty at all, but from what research I've done, what little we see in S7 canon could be consistent with certain forms of muscular dystrophy that have later onset, usually in early adulthood. There are some forms that manifest more in the limbs at first, and at a later age, and from what little we know in the canon, it just seems to fit. I've seen other fan theories about ALS, but I'm not convinced. I have no idea if and how they may address this in S8, but I suspect it might have caused issues as they rapidly aged clones so my personal thought is that they needed to correct it.


	29. Chapter 29

<<I’m sorry again, Kazuko. Please let me know if there is anything I can do by email or phone in the next few days…>>

Keith has given up trying to listen in on the last of Shiro’s conversation with his cousin, and continues to browse for movies to download before they take off from Earth and they lose access to unrestricted bandwidth.

<<Yeah, we’re leaving in a couple weeks... No, I don’t think I’ll have time to make it over before then. There is so much going on, and well, you know, I figure that if my mother hasn’t bothered to show up by now it can’t hurt to wait a little longer… yes, it could be a year.>>

They were supposed to head out soon for dinner. They had caught wind of Shiro’s upcoming promotion and Lance was determined to make the best of it. In a way, Pidge still being underage was a blessing, there would be no expectation of a long night out.

<<Yeah, tell my grandfather I’m sorry I can’t make it to his birthday celebrations next month. 88 years. I’ll see if I can order the right kind of card, yeah… with the mizuhiki pointed up, right… I still remember some of this stuff! Look, I need to go. Can you send me the contact on who the Garrison should speak to for Yuuji’s file… yeah that one. I’ll deal with it in the morning… Thank you again. Bye.>>

Keith hears Shiro shuffling around the room for a moment and shuts down the tablet, leaving it on the coffee table. “You ready yet?” he calls out.

“Yeah give me a second, they sent me this jacket from the tailor’s and I know it fits over the shoulder if I just do… aha. Got it,” Shiro says as he comes out into the living area. Keith can’t honestly remember the last time he saw Shiro dressed up in anything but the Garrison uniform. The suit jacket was tailored to mostly fit over the shoulder casing, and paired with a pair of slacks and a nice shirt, Shiro looked more like a young professional than an intergalactic war veteran.

“You managed to tie everything up with Kazuko?” he asks Shiro as the two of them pull on their shoes.

“Just have a few things to deal with for Yuuji. The company was a bit upset that he disappeared for several days without warning. I’ve mostly left it to the poor liaison officer posted in Japan to deal with.”

“The crystal isn’t due to be delivered for another couple days. You still have time to make a trip if you wanted to. I think your yeoman has told me he can make the space in your calendar three times already.”

“Johannson needs to learn to stop mucking in my calendar. Or telling you more than he does to me. Besides, I still have to review another few dozen personnel files before I can approve the transfers, and god, why did I ever agree to be the commanding officer?” Shiro sighs dramatically.

“Just think about it, in another few days we can test the crystal again. Won’t that be fun?” Keith ruthlessly teases Shiro, who just makes a face at him as they make their way down to the lobby of the housing block.

“Whatever. At least this time I won’t be drugged out of my mind. And my kidneys ached for a week last time. I told Forrester that after they start the IV line this time not to just run saline for the hell of it.”

Keith laughs, and Shiro can’t help but join in. He wasn’t really looking forward to another round of testing, but he and Allura were able to make a visit to the Balmera and see them begin to extract the massive castle class crystal. From close up, it make his arm tingle, and Coran assured him later that it was a positive sign that this one would be compatible with not only the remains of the castle of lions, but with him.

As the doors on the lift open, he sees Hunk looks back at them, and the other paladins step around the corner.

“Wow Keith, I didn’t think you actually owned a suit jacket,” Lance teases him.

“I didn’t,” Keith says with mock-snark, and the two of them playfully banter while Allura rolls her eyes.

“Looking lovely, ladies,” Shiro says with a smile. Allura’s wearing a dress in soft blue that he recognizes from a photo he was shown when he sat down for lunch with Veronica a few days back when he was coaxing her to join the crew. “And I mean you too Pidge.”

Pidge is, amazingly, wearing a dress as well with a sweater over it. “It feels so weird after all this,” she complains.

“You wore dresses all the time when I first met you, Katie” he teases.

She makes a face at him. “Only my family ever calls me Katie anymore. I almost feel like I’m a different person as Pidge now.”

“Fair enough, but I’m glad that Allura and Romelle coaxed you into getting some new clothes before we are away from home again.”

“You’re as bad as Mom,” she whines as they all pile into the transport.

\---

Arriving at the restaurant, they meet with the Holts, who brought Romelle and Coran with them. Veronica shows up a few minutes later.

Except for Pidge, who gets a stern look from her mother when she tried to order some wine for herself, they are served promptly. Shiro can see the kitchen making their appetizers from his vantage point, and he gathers everyone’s attention.

“I want to keep this short and sweet, but thank you for coming out tonight. I figured this might be the only chance in a long time to enjoy a nice evening out, and Hunk’s mouth has been watering at the prospect of fine dining for days now. I want you all to know how much I appreciate you all volunteering to make the difficult journey back out there with me, and well, Colleen, for letting your family go as well.” She nods, understandingly.

“I can’t promise that this will be easy. Or even enjoyable at times. But with all of your support, I couldn’t be doing this. I’m still a little bit in awe. So let’s have a good time tonight, before we are stuck on a ship with a couple hundred others.” He picks up his wine glass for a toast, and the others follow suit. “To saving the universe, and to absent friends.”

\---

“You know doctor, when you said we wouldn’t need that flight suit for today’s testing, I thought just maybe this would mean I wouldn’t need all this stuff to monitor my vitals. Again,” Shiro grumbles, as Keith trails behind him with an IV pole and the receiver for the monitoring system.

“It’s a pulse oximeter, a blood glucose monitor, and a headset the Olkari gave us to use instead of an EEG. Hardly invasive,” Forrester says as Shiro waves his left arm where the IV port is already inserted but capped off. “And yes, the IV, but the pump will only get turned on if we need to.”

Keith leans in close to him. “Did you tell the doctor about that humming you've been hearing whenever you get on the ship?”

“God no,” Shiro hisses under his breath. “And it’s not a humming, it’s just a weird feeling. Almost like if you get close to a strong electrical field. It’s probably nothing. If it it persists I promise I’ll talk to him about it.”

“Everything fine?” the doctor asks.

“Yeah, all good here,” he chirps back, before giving Keith a quick annoyed look.

They turn onto the bridge and Sam and Coran are both waiting for them. Keith rolls his eyes at him one last time before he steps to the front of the bridge and takes a seat at the helm.

“Number one! We have the crystals both set up. We’ve been able to run most of the systems checks already and the Atlas looks fit to go,” Coran beams as Shiro settles onto the command chair and reluctantly lets the doctor connect the IV line. He eyes the bags of solutions feeding into the pump.

“The crew has already been briefed,” Iverson says from the corner of the bridge, “Take the Atlas to high Earth orbit, perform a test burn to check the power supply to the engines, then it’s up to you, sir.”

“Great,” Shiro says, while Forrester adjusts the headset. It presses a little against his temples but it was fine. “Signal the crew that we are go for launch and let’s get going.”

The bridge crew runs through their checks and Keith takes the ship up, smoothly rising above the hangar until it clears enough for the main engine burn to take them out of the Earth’s atmosphere. He had insisted on getting officially qualified on it, saying it could be important, and Shiro knew better than to argue with him.

They gently adjust course once in orbit, and after confirming with the engineering team that they were ready to test engine output on the new crystal alone, they pushed the Atlas up to full throttle. The testing would get them on a long elliptical ending out near Mars’ orbital path, but not near the planet itself, and Shiro was pleased how smooth the ship seemed to run even at a full burn.

The Holts had been working non-stop over the weeks to repair, upgrade, and prepare the Atlas, and Shiro shared in Sam’s happy proud look as they finished up the engine testing and coasted towards the Earth, stopping near the L4 lagrange point near the Moon, which was deemed close enough to Earth if something went amiss.

“Engineering, report,” Shiro commands.

“All systems nominal sir, no power fluctuations and both the old and new crystals are connected.”

“Good, helm?”

“Ready to go.”

“Medical,” he says with a hint of reluctance.

“Ready,” Forrester says from where he sits at the back of the bridge with two medics.

“Alright, signal the crew to maintain positions and let’s give this a shot.” He takes a deep breath and tries to relax, eyes closing as he does his best to get into the meditative headspace.

The connection comes more easily this time around, and he audibly gasps as the bridge around him is suddenly outlined in blue. He looks around, and can almost feel as the ship, not just make sense of it. It all feels effortless compared to before. The systems are his to control at will, and he quirks a smile as the doctor gives him a thumbs up.

“Atlas transforming now! Let’s see what she can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of a filler, tying up a couple minor plot points and setting up for the last head canon of mine that I wanted to deal with in this fic. I wanted to leave parts of this fic a little open ended in case I feel like writing add ons later (work is picking up again so it depends on how tired I am and how badly I want to channel my inner snark / dark humour through fictional characters lol).
> 
> Which brings me to some good news, now that I'm basically done this aside from hitting the post button each day, I've began plotting out what should be a relatively short, one part spin off (but firmly in this series because it assumes you've read this fic) because writing this thing clearly did not take enough out of me. Because I don't intend on it to be multi chapter it'll probably be released a few days after the last chapter of this one as long as I get one solid day of writing in, so Sunday/Monday-ish.


	30. Chapter 30

“Captain?”

Shiro looks up from his desk. The rank still feels like some sort of joke, although it’s been substantial for over a week now. The ship is abuzz with activity as they prepare to deploy, and the paperwork follows him day and night. He took part of a day off after the last test, thankful that it was for a quiet afternoon to himself and not for the time blocked off in case he needed to spend it in the base hospital.

“Yes, Johannson?” he acknowledges his young yeoman, maybe a year younger than Lance. Just graduated and now about to leave home for who knows how long.

“The base has called up. Someone arrived asking to see you. You might want to head down.”

He suppresses an eye roll and closes the report he was skimming, and pulls up his calendar. “I honestly don’t have the time right now, I’ll be down… the day after tomorrow for the last briefing.”

“Sorry sir, I should have been clearer. It’s important.”

Shiro sighs. So young, so vague. He gestures for Johannson to continue.

“It’s… well, your mother, sir.”

\---

Keith takes him down to Earth in the black lion. As he perches on the jump seat in the back of the cockpit he can’t help but run through increasingly dark scenarios in his head. Chronologically speaking, it’s been nearly ten years since he last saw her, and he’s been dreading this moment ever since he last saw her.

Keith brings them into the hangar, and he takes his time to check into the guest quarters he’s been assigned for the night now that he’s effectively moved in on the Atlas. He sets the duffle on the bed, pulling out the new base dress uniform that was probably going to just collect dust in his quarters once they depart in a few days. They had a new shipboard uniform that was more practical than the heavier grey fabric he knew so well but was soaked in years of memories.

His hair had been recently cut, the last tinge of the dye gone, and it was starkly white against his complexion. There was no use hiding it from his mother. He adjusts the outer casing around his right shoulder, fixing where the jacket bunched slightly, and he steps out to the corridor where Keith was waiting. The senior officer’s uniform on Keith’s form was an odd sight still, but he wore it well.

After everything, Shiro was surprised how readily the four of them had accepted commissions. Allura politely declined, officially so that she could continue to act on behalf of her family’s legacy, and Coran opted for the same, saying that his duty was first to the princess, and then for furthering relations between the Earth and the Voltron coalition.

He steps off down the hall, Keith beside him, and they make their way to the base headquarters.

“You sure you want to do this alone? You don’t have to,” Keith offers a last time.

“No, I just need to deal with this. I’ll give you a shout when I’m done, okay?” he replies, giving a smile that gives an air of confidence that he knows Keith can see right through.

“Sure, I get it,” is all that Keith says in return, knowing not to press it further.

Shiro takes a deep breath once Keith disappears out of sight around a corner, and pushes the door open. His mother, aged but still obviously herself is sitting on the edge of the meeting room chair. Her hair has streaks of grey and he’s not surprised that she is wearing a black suit. She looks up, and her expression is unreadable.

“Takashi.”

“Okaasan,” he says neutrally, sitting across from her.

<<Kazuko came to see me. She tells me you are leaving again,>> she starts, voice surprisingly emotional.

<<It’s true,>> he says simply. <<Now that Earth is secure for now, we need to assist other planets recently freed from the Galra.>>

<<I see,>> she replies.

<<I suppose you have a reason behind the visit.>>

<<I needed to see it for myself,>> she says softly. <<I needed to make sure you do not leave again with any regrets.>>

He almost pushes back from the table right then and there, but stops himself, blowing an exasperated huff that she could not have missed. <<I think we are too late for that now, mother.>>

<<I’ve had almost ten years to think about my own regrets, Takashi.>>

<<It’s always been about you and my father. The family duty. I was always secondary to that,>> Shiro vents suddenly. <<You made that very clear.>>

<<You were my only child. Your father and I always agreed… that we needed to set you up for success.>> Her gaze is centred on her hands.

<<At the expense of my happiness,>> he says bitterly.

<<We as a family have always depended on those doing what was needed to continue the line, preserve the business,>> she protests.

<<I cannot believe you came all this way if this is all you planned to do. I don’t have time to sit here and hear this again->>

<<Stop,>> she pleads. <<I didn't mean to come and fight with you. But I do need to share some unfortunate news.>>

<<Like what?>> he asks, with more venom than he should have.

<<Your grandfather passed away unexpectedly a few days ago,>> she says quietly. <<It was after you last spoke with Kazuko. Your father is arranging the funeral service.>>

<<Oh,>> is all he can think of to say.

<<I had already decided to come here before…>> she take a deep breath, <<Before this all happened. Truly. I thought I had come to terms with losing you. When you took your commission, and again when you went missing.>>

Shiro can’t bring himself to look at her face, but sees tears begin to stain the tops of her hands where they lay on the table in front of her.

<<I realized that I took your sense of duty for granted and was greedy. I am sorry.>>

They sit in silence for uncountable minutes. The chair makes a squeak as he stands and walks around the table’s edge. He hesitates for a moment before sitting next to her, pulling her slight form into an awkward embrace.

<<I’m sorry that I felt that I had to choose one or the other,>> he says simply. <<But at the time, I didn’t see another option.>>

She pushes back after a while, and grabs her purse from where it sat on the table, and pulls out a letter written on stiff washi paper.

<<I can push the launch date back a couple days…>>

<<No, no. It’s not necessary. I don’t know if your father is ready to see you. I don’t want you to spend your last day here quarreling. I think it would have made your grandfather disappointed.>>

<<I see.>>

<<This is your copy of the will,>> she says, collecting herself. <<Your grandfather has left you your portion in trust. If you choose not to take an active role, it will be managed for you in perpetuity. As per his last instructions, there is no obligations for you unless you make that choice. There is also a personal letter he wrote for you with instructions to let you read it when you feel ready.>>

He can’t think of what to say, and he sits there in stunned silence.

<<I should leave,>> she whispers.

Shiro hesitates for a moment but reaches for her hand before she can stand upright. <<I don’t know when we’ll be back at Earth again. It might be a long time. Maybe a year.>>

<<I understand,>> she replies. <<When you are ready, I hope you will come home. I’ll work on your father.>>

She stands up and moves towards the door.

<<Mother,>> he calls out before she passes the threshold. She turns and looks at him. <<Thank you.>>

She smiles slightly, and with a short bow leaves the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, we're almost at the end of this journey, with just one part to go. For those of you who have been following this from the near start, thank you for all the kind comments and kudos.
> 
> I still have some mixed feelings about this chapter, but decided that the strained family ties that are brought up earlier in the fic needed some resolution, but not total. We have gotten zilch info on his family in canon, and I can only make assumptions. Who knows if it will get addressed in S8?
> 
> Anyways, maybe someday I'll write more on this.
> 
> I ploughed away at a long procrastinated sewing project last night (my neighbours must think I'm up to something insane because my ancient sewing machine is freakishly loud) so once I finish some hemming and ironing, I might have something semi decent to wear to the dinner at the conference I have to go to in a couple weeks. Hopefully this means I will have time to finish my first little spin off ficlet this weekend.


	31. Epilogue

“I thought this might be where you were,” Shiro hears through the comm. He turns his head back towards where the airlock is and sees Keith grabs ahold of the handrail next to him on the hull of the Atlas and swing himself to rest beside him before clipping his tether in place. “I didn’t realize you came back up on your own until someone told me. You really needed to get away from everyone, didn’t you?” Keith says in a slightly humorous tone.

“This close to the Atlas, nothing is ever really quiet anymore,” he says thoughtfully. “But it’s good enough.”

“You don’t really hear Black anymore when you come into the lions, do you?” Keith asks sincerely.

“No," Shiro replies. "I haven’t for a long time now. Part of me misses it. It was not as… overwhelming as the Atlas has sometimes been, even with the extra crystal to take the load now.”

The two of them sit in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m glad you will be there to support us,” Keith says in a low voice. “I couldn’t imagine going back out there without you.” He has his hands folded in his lap, rubbing at the material absentmindedly. Slightly puffy in the vacuum of space, it doesn’t quite feel right compared to the material of the paladin suit.

“There is still so much to do here. I feel a little guilty leaving everything behind again.”

“We’re leaving it in good hands. Besides, the universe needs us.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done. Thank you all for the kudos and comments.
> 
> This work is dedicated to Leslie Gordon Knight.
> 
> “And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod  
> The high untrespassed sanctity of space,  
> Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
> 
> \- "High Flight"


End file.
